Capital gainsI recently sold some assets which attract Capital Gains Tax. I previously purchased £3,000 of Eircom shares and incurred a loss with the sale to Vodafone and the acquisition by Valentia. I can presumably set off this loss against the CGT but my problem is how do I calculate the loss?

Capital gains

I recently sold some assets which attract Capital Gains Tax. I previously purchased £3,000 of Eircom shares and incurred a loss with the sale to Vodafone and the acquisition by Valentia. I can presumably set off this loss against the CGT but my problem is how do I calculate the loss? Mr V.R., e-mail

You are right that you can offset your loss on the Eircom adventure against the capital gain your recent asset sale will attract, once you have sold the Eircom holding. Obviously, the rump of Eircom now owned by Eircom has passed from your hands and can be claimed against a capital gain this year.

Assuming the Vodafone end of the deal continues to yield a capital loss, that is claimable once you sell those shares.

We have covered the calculation of this before but it is the subject of continuing controversy and I would suggest that people should check with their accountants when making annual returns.

Eircom started life at €3.90. At the time of the split, the Revenue determined that the value of each part of the company was:

Eircom (now Valentia) €1.11

Eircell (now Vodafone) €1.45406.

Working what each was as a proportion of the original Eircom price gives you a post-split valuation for what later was bought by Valentia for €1.69, rounded to the nearest cent. Given that Valentia paid shareholders €1.335 per share (excluding a dividend payment), there is a residual loss per share of 35.5 cents per share.

The portion of the original price now accounted for by Vodafone is €2.20 per Eircom share or - allowing for the fact that each Eircom share became 0.9478 of a Vodafone share - €4.66 to the nearest cent.

My understanding in relation to bonus shares, which were issued to shareholders a year after the original flotation, is that they carry a zero rating on value at issue, do not influence the formula for working out the post-split value of Eircom and carry a full capital gain in the case of Eircom Valentia of €1.335 and a gain in the case of Vodafone of whatever price you sell at, divided by 0.9478. However, it is true to say that I have yet to find two people who agree on the treatment of these bonus shares.

Training and tax

I am currently working for a company in Waterford and I wish to further my education to benefit the company and my position. I have just completed an Arts degree in Cork which was to enable me to do my job more effectively.

The courses I am considering doing are a Masters in Public Relations in D.I.T. and a Postgraduate Diploma in Public Relations and E-Commerce in Fitzwilliam Institute.

Due to the fact that these courses are in Dublin, the costs are expected to be high. On completion of either of these courses, the company will benefit from my position, so is it tax deductible?

Ms S.L.,Waterford

As with most of these things, part of the answer comes down to a matter of interpretation.

The more straightforward end of things is the actual fees incurred. It appears that these can either be claimed against tax by you, provided the colleges and the courses meet the requirements, or by your employer, provided that the course is seen as relevant to the work that they carry out.

This is the key point. As far as I can see, there is fairly broad scope for employers to claim back money spent on training but they need to be able to persuade the tax authorities about the relevance of the exercise.

If successful, in cases like yours this relief could extend beyond the actual course fees to include the cost of getting you to and from the colleges.

Any relief you yourself might claim would appear to be limited to course fees. You should contact the Revenue and request a copy of leaflet IT31, which deals with tax relief on tuition fees. Alternatively, you can download it from their website. It includes a form for claiming the relief.

However, you might want to investigate with your employer whether it would not be more beneficial for them to claim your training costs against their tax liability.

Stocks

I am still confused by your reply about certain companies trading both on the Dublin stock market and elsewhere showing different prices. How many of these are there and how is the investor to know?

Mr D.L., e-mail

There are a large number of companies with dual listings on the Irish market, not surprising given the relatively small scale of the Irish market and the desire of companies to spread the net wide in the search for investors. What is perhaps more surprising is that, out of the 81 companies whose prices are published each day in The Irish Times markets page, no fewer than 18 have their primary listing outside Ireland. Some of these are obvious, others less so.

They are (together with the last date on which they traded in Dublin):

n Aviva, formerly CGNU

(06/12/01)

n Bioglan Pharma (18/07/01)

Conduit (12/07/02)

n Diageo (27/03/02)

n Galen Holdings (daily)

n Icon (15/07/02)

n Iona Technologies (daily)

n Miller Fisher (09/03/02)

n Navan Mining (11/07/02)

n Premier Oil (23/07/02)

n Qualceram Shires

(22/07/02)

n Real Estate Opps (08/05/02)

n Riverdeep (almost daily)

n Tesco (17/04/02)

n Trinity Biotech (02/05/02)

n Ulster TV (27/03/02)

n Viridian (23/07/02)

n Vislink (23/07/02)

As you can see, some of these companies have not traded in recent times. Their share prices on the Irish market will only move when they trade here, as none of them is considered big enough in itself to distort the market with occasional trading.

It is something of a chicken and egg situation - because the companies rarely trade here, brokers selling shares on behalf of clients tend to go to their more active primary market in search of buyers; similarly, buyers looking for a particular stock will hunt in the more liquid markets where they are more likely to come across sellers.

When this goes on for long enough - and I notice one of the above shares has only traded once since early 1998 - the price in the Dublin market can become more of a hindrance than a help as several readers have pointed out.

The best advice I can give is for shareholders in most of these stocks - there are exceptions such as Galen, Iona and Riverdeep - to look at the shares' performance in its primary market, whether that is London, the Nasdaq or the German Neuer Markt. In response to reader concerns, The Irish Times will look at a way to mark those shares which do not have a primary listing in Dublin.

Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, D'Olier Street, Dublin 2 or e-mail to dcoyle@irish-times.ie. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice. Due to the volume of mail, there may be a delay in answering queries. All suitable queries will be answered through the columns of the newspaper. No personal correspondence will be entered into.