1. If money doesn’t leave the account, there hasn’t been a disposal?
A general investment account is a service rather than a product wrapper. From a tax perspective there is no difference in holding each asset within the account or directly. Where an asset is sold for any reason, this is a disposal for Capital Gains Tax (CGT) purposes. In addition to withdrawals removing money from the account, disposals include selling units/shares to cover:
- Platform/provider charges
- Adviser ongoing advice fees / ad-hoc fees
- Switching to alternative assets
- Portfolio re-alignments / rebalances
- Discretionary Fund Manager fees
Holding a cash balance in the account can help to avoid a disposal for each charge but at some stage the cash balance will need to be replenished. If this is done by selling units/shares this would be a disposal.