Revenue moves to ease pain for Vodafone shareholders over windfall

I read with great interest your articles on Vodafone’s share payout earlier this year. I wrote to both Vodafone and Computershare at the time, arguing that I, like others, had opted in plenty of time for the “capital option”.

I even sent a certificate of postage to show that the letter should have been received in plenty of time, but they were unmoved and refused to change their position that I had missed the deadline and was receiving the default "income option".

Is there any more I can do ? Perhaps you have heard from others in my situation ? I do not relish the prospect of paying 50 per cent tax on the payout I received , considering that we lost on the shares in the first place . . . all down to one word, “income” option . I received €800 approximately.

Ms M O’L, email

Have I heard from others in your position? Have I what? It has been the single biggest issue to come across my desk this year and has clearly created a significant amount of ill-will among shareholders towards both Vodafone and Computershare, the share registrar that managed the “return of value” operation for them.

Although the events date back to February, it still seems amazing that a company could make such a hames of something that was intended to be good news for long-suffering shareholders.

The 380,000 shareholders in Ireland are unlikely ever to see a return on their original investment in Telecom Éireann, which dates way back to 1999. The good news for you and thousands of others is that Revenue feels your pain.

The Finance Bill published late last week made specific provision in relation to the Vodafone windfall that will mean you no longer have to worry about income options, capital options or tax.

It is not clear exactly how many people will benefit, but given the furore at the time – and the fact that Revenue and Minister for Finance Michael Noonan have seen fit to make provision in the Finance Bill, which implements his budget measures – it seems reasonable to assume that a large number of the 380,000 mostly small shareholders will benefit.

Essentially, the Bill says that Revenue will assume that people chose the “capital” option unless they specifically opted for the “income” alternative.

As the explanatory memorandum to Finance Bill 2015 says, "the effect of this provision is that Irish shareholders who received this return of value on foot of an original investment by them in Eircom, will have no tax liability as they are carrying capital losses for tax purposes as a result of that original investment".

The relevant section of the Finance Bill is Section 42.

So it no longer matters whether Vodafone says you missed the deadline for returning the form, or even that you never got around to returning it at all and so received the default option. Unless you actually ticked the income option box – which will have been appropriate for a very small minority of shareholders – Revenue will treat the windfall as capital, with the important proviso that the windfall you received must have been less than €1,000.

It is very good news because people could have been facing the loss of up to 55 per cent of their “windfall” by the time they paid income tax, universal social charge and PRSI on the money they received from Vodafone.

The purpose behind the change, as the Finance Bill makes clear, is to avoid penalising people who are still nursing losses on their original investment in Telecom Éireann – and that seems only fair. It is good to see Revenue moving to adopt a commonsense approach to what has been a deeply contentious issue.

The Finance Bill measure is not a carte blanche for shareholder windfalls. It applies only to Vodafone and only to the "return of value" offering earlier this year after the company sold its stake in US telecoms group Verizon.

Of course, you will need to wait until the measure is passed into law after going through the Oireachtas, but it is safe to say that there is no chance of this particular measure failing to secure support from all sides of the political divide.

Once that happens, you are in the clear. You do not have to make any specific claim or get Vodafone to issue any new clarification. Revenue will simply assume the payment was capital and you will not be obliged to return it for tax.

But there is a salutary lesson to be had here. For although I do believe something went badly awry with at least some of the communications between shareholders and Vodafone on this deal, the original paperwork from the company, and from Computershare, was fairly clear about the options and the process, even to generally unsophisticated small shareholders.

The truth is that many people, long since fed up with being reminded of the folly of their investment in Eircom/Telecom Éireann, did not even bother to open the communications from Vodafone until far too late in the day, or not at all.

And many of those who did saw the scale of the paperwork and simply put it aside until later, assuming that it was just another impenetrable mailing, like so many of the communications with shareholders ahead of annual meetings and so on.

People who invest in shares – or who inherit shares that others have invested in – really do need to keep abreast of what is happening with them. Major events, especially shareholder windfalls of widely held stock, such as Vodafone, will generally attract widespread coverage in newspapers. Less high-profile companies will still be required to provide information in a user-friendly format if they are activating a windfall.

Given the complex nature of the transaction Vodafone was undertaking, it was always going to require a bit of effort to understand, but, to be fair to the company and Computershare, they clearly took a lot of time to try to make the investor information as simple as possible. Send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara St, Dublin 2, or email dcoyle@irishtimes.com. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice.