Short sell dividend UK

[vvolf]

Hello,

say I short a stock. Say it goes ex-div. When that happens, my broker charges me negative dividend accrual until payment date when cash is debited with the amount of dividend as "Payment in lieu of dividend". Fair enough. How is this effectively "negative" income treated for tax? does anyone know? can i use to reduce my income or is it expense of selling the share?

cheers.

 

[theSheik]

just to be clear, are you SB or trading equities as owned stock

 

[vvolf]

apologies, what is SB?

 

[ukdaytrader]

I had a similar query as well, the accountant advised to treat all of this as a capital gain / loss. Probably want to take proper advice on this but it would appear that the dividend income / or loss in your case is not treated as income (there is no tax credits attached if it was income hence it is not really income). The broker displays it this way but in effect you are looking in total at a capital gain / loss on the whole transaction. (gain / loss on the capital + gain / loss on the income)