have the capital gains tax goal posts moved?

[martin]

I used to understand that what you paid for the house and then what you sold it for was the "gain" on which you paid tax..however on expatsfocus site someone has now wrote this


"My understanding is that the price paid for a property is not relevant when calculating the value of an inherited asset for CGT as you are trying to value the asset as at the date you inherit not when it was purchased.

Unfortunately under Portuguese tax law the way they do this is to reassess the rateable (Patrimonial Valuation) of a property and use this. In theory these valuations should be reasonably close to the market valuation of the property so should be a fair valuation of the asset. In reality and in our particular case this was very far from the truth."

have they now changed the law?

[widge]

Sounds very odd to me!

A gain or loss can only be calculated by establishing the difference between two values.

I always assumed these were how much you bought the property for and how much you sold it for (or it's market value at the time of inheritance if you don't sell it).

If that isn't the case I would be interested to learn more.