Smart Live Markets - Spread Bet on MT4

alan5616 said:
Now you can see why this is such a grey area. Let's assume that you earned £50, at the weekend, stacking shelves in Tesco but, traded 12 hours a day during the normal working week. Your profits, from trading, amounted to approximately £5,000 per week and you made 10 trades each day; what would HMRC consider to be your primary occupation and income source? The shelf stacking in Tesco's? Unlikely, I think.
Click to expand...

Bit late into this discussion - apologies - I have investigated this area over the years and I broadly agree with what has already been said. Apparently no one has ever been convicted of not paying tax from SB earnings. Big companies such as IG pay huge amounts of corporation tax which may help to explain why this is the case. In Las Vegas ( complete aside I know) they pay just 8% tax total as all the big Casino's pay Federal and State taxes hence its the fastest growing state in the US!

Overall - as already said - it boils down to how you earn your income. If you are a PAYE for even relatively small earnings your SB income is non declarable. IF your SB income becomes your sole income then the situation changes; and as others have said the benefits of having an SB account disappears. The tax office would regard it as earnings not CGT. I fill in a SA each year but do not declare my SB income in the same way I don't declare my tax free pension lump sum. I would, however, start to declare SB earnings if it became my sole income.

Back to SL - very pleased with this broker after the spread changes - no drop in performance - I do check the FSA register just t make sure all is above board ( Activtrades and Alpari have fallen foul of them in recent years). After approx 6 months live trading so far so good.
 
Last edited:
Apart from anything else, as about 90% of spreadbetters lose, HMRC will find raking in tax from the providers much more worthwhile (and easier) than chasing around after the few people who actually manage to make a significant profit.
 
peter5433 said:
I have investigated this area over the years and I broadly agree with what has already been said. Apparently no one has ever been convicted of not paying tax from SB earnings...

.... If you are a PAYE for even relatively small earnings your SB income is non declarable....

....Back to SL - very pleased with this broker after the spread changes - no drop in performance - I do check the FSA register just t make sure all is above board ( Activtrades and Alpari have fallen foul of them in recent years). After approx 6 months live trading so far so good.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the great input, always very useful to hear from people who have researched the area of SB taxation. I'm glad to hear what you said and I think it's pretty much a solid (satisfactory) answer to the question.

As for the "falling foul" thing with FSA, what do you mean?
 
Ross Spur said:
Apart from anything else, as about 90% of spreadbetters lose, HMRC will find raking in tax from the providers much more worthwhile (and easier) than chasing around after the few people who actually manage to make a significant profit.
Click to expand...

I know, how two faced is that?!?!?! :mad:

On the one hand you have the damned taxman saying "ok look gamblers generally fail so sod it let's collect from the bookies for easy guaranteed tax income" yet if an individual bucks the trend and wins over and over then suddenly it's all "but that's not fair on the rest of the population [including the losing gamblers] so tax them individually on top! No one must win without paying the price!!"

But it looks like we've established the loophole is to just have a part time regular job (PAYE) if you are winning big with spreadbets and you're money is safe.

Ok ok sorry I know this is the SLM thread, no more from me about tax, enough Pine enough!!! :eek:

Back to SLM. No probs my end with them - anyone still got any ongoing issues?
 
pineappleman said:
Thanks for the great input, always very useful to hear from people who have researched the area of SB taxation. I'm glad to hear what you said and I think it's pretty much a solid (satisfactory) answer to the question.

As for the "falling foul" thing with FSA, what do you mean?
Click to expand...

Well I hope you don't take all the marketing 'hype' ( not necessarily SL) as gospel with these brokers - I always research the regulatory bodies - in this case the FSA - for recent infringements and up to date account returns via Companies House to make sure my money is as safe and secure as possible. For just a few £ you can get a breakdown of company accounts - pretty good if you have a large investment at stake..

Alpari ( non compliance with money laundering regs and Activtrades ( non compliance with retail fund segregation) have both been fined by the FSA for not insubstantial amounts recently; which is hopefully keeping the rest on their toes..remember it is not that long ago that a certain US broker took all their clients funds to the cleaners..
 
Regarding previous comments on outages - all brokers will have outages at some stage - nothing unusual at all about that - IG used to freeze up with any major news announcement. All brokers will have slippage, re quotes and partial order fills. It is up to the trader to adapt to each. I strongly advise spending as little time in the market as possible i.e. reduce your exposure to the absolute minimum and not get too greedy with leverage. The time to really start worrying is when your stops start getting taken out prematurely or profitable orders fails to close out at TP. Overall I have experienced no order fill issues at all with SL - long may it continue..
 
my SLM live account is running MT4 v4 build 229

but my other MT4 trade accounts are running on MT4 v4 build 399

is there some good reason why SLM are using an old update ?
 
Mornington Crescent said:
problem solved

it was all down to bloody Vista (yet again)
:!:
Click to expand...

Ha ha - yes I got caught out by Vista - damn nuisance :mad:. You have to change the permissions on Program Files, or it copies everything somewhere else for you. Found the answer on a Vista forum somewhere but I can't remember the exact details.
 
Yes they are, I downloaded their demo last week. Not spreadbetting though. But as discussed earlier in this thread if spreadbetting is your sole income it could be taxable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Smart Live vs. IBFX
Replies
10
Views
4K
Oscarossa
O
G
GKFX (former Smart Live Markets)
2 3
Replies
45
Views
15K
gle101
G
I
FXTM, Intertrader and Xtrade
Replies
0
Views
2K
iandh2010
I
B
SpreadBet MT4 Recommendations
2
Replies
22
Views
6K
montmorencyt2w
M
S
ECN/stp brokers compatible with MT4 ?
Replies
0
Views
2K
saj1011
S
Top