Readers’ forum: Tax treatment of business partnership holding property

I was interested to read the reply in Readers’ forum ‘Selling farmland’ (Taxation 9 March 2023).

I have a situation where a husband and wife are joint owners of the large portfolio of residential investment property in England. Some years ago we registered the business as a partnership with HMRC although the underlying ownership of the properties remains in joint names of the married couple. This was with a view to incorporating the business and possibly mitigating SDLT using the sum of the parts on SDLT relief in FA 2003 Sch 15 – which the couple have subsequently decided they do not wish to do. The property portfolio contains large capital gains. There are no borrowings.

Taking the point from CG30360 that interest in a partnership assets are not included for the purposes of TCGA 1992 s 62(1) does this mean that this situation is actually disadvantageous...