Brother wants me to cash in his shares for him

[marciaa]

He lives in Thailand and cannot cash in his computershare shares cos he doesn't have a UK address. Says he will pay for any tax that I would need to pay. He has about 200k of them.
I don't want to get involved in this.

Has anyone else come across this before?

Do not do it

can he transfer them to you? Or sell them to you? Ask the company (or he can)

https://www.computershare.com/uk/individuals/im-a-shareholder/manage-your-shareholdings-online

Yes, he wants to transfer them to me and then me cash them in for him. Sounds like a lot of hassle doesn't it?

I should imagine at that level of shares, you will end up with a sizeable CGT bill.

I certainly don't want to - but I need to find reasons to tell him why not other than I don't want to be involved. He says he'll pay me a %commission (I don't want that)(I don't want the hassle). He says he'll pay my tax bill.

Sounds like you don't trust him @marciaa
So he can say what he likes, but if you don't want to, don't.

The reason he can't cash in the shares is highly likely due to money laundering regulations and restrictions...so if you help him circumnavigate those, you'll be implicated if the government decide a crime has been committed.

There must be companies that specialise in this sort of transaction - he needs to do his research and identify a trustworthy one to cash in the shares. Otherwise, he needs to make other arrangements to access the funds.

I would not involve myself in a family members financial dealings ,there stuff . End of .

There is something weird going on here. If he has shares to sell, he can either sell them directly using a share trading platform or use a broker and pay them a commission - presumably if you sell them for him you'd have to do the same, so he's no worse off financially. There is no reason why being in Thailand stops him doing that.

If he is doing it to avoid paying tax, either in the U.K. or Thailand, then you would be participating in that tax evasion, which is a criminal offence.

Just say that you believe that taking ownership of shares from him and then selling them could cause you tax problems such as having to file a tax return and possibly pay capital gains tax so you aren't able to help.

He does have a bank account here in UK as he has a small house he rents out. He's not doing it to dodge tax. He's told me for a while that Computershare can't sell them for him as he's not in the UK.

I think he needs to travel over here and sell them while he's here.

Go careful!

I'd offer to host him if he wants to visit home and sell them himself but wouldn't be getting involved other than that.

There are other companies offering financial services, and some specialise in business involving parties outside the UK. It's not exactly unusual these days to have financial transactions in countries other than the one where you are resident. He just needs to pull his finger out and do some research. The best case is he's being lazy and thinks getting his sister to do it for him is the easiest way (for him) to get his money.

If you don't want to do it, don't. I am not an expert but I strongly suspect there are many pitfalls for you doing it that could have implications for your own tax position.

So 200k in shares. A flight back 1k? Comes back for a week and sells the shares puts the money in his account and goes back. Seems simple enough so why the OP doing it?

I think this is to do with money laundering and identity checks - UK share registrars don’t usually accept overseas registrars as they can’t e.g. check overseas postcodes etc. I really wouldn’t get involved - there are so many ways it could go wrong.
Instead he should be looking at getting a broker to do the sale for him. And some banks might offer this service.

Thanks all. I wanted to get some ideas of how to say no. My brother is seriously ill but at the moment still able to travel, so I hope he can come over soon and sort all this out. It really is not about tax evasion on this occasion. I really don't want to be involved in dealing with such a large sum of money and after speaking with my DH tonight I feel ok about how I am going to respond.

He’s right. Computershare need a UK address to sell them. But he should still be able to move to them a broker like Hargreaves Lansdown that allow non-doms to transact.