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Written by Simon Cooper FRICS, Consultant and Registered Valuer.
For most people in the world, the 31st March 1982 is an irrelevant date. However to a select group of accountants and surveyors (groan), this date is rather exciting.
I myself was still a teenager (just) and a packet of Players No 6 (king size of course) which I then smoked, cost a little over £1 for 20, 
whilst a pint of Wessex real ale brewed by the now defunct Devenish Brewery, which was supped in the Chequers Inn at Lytchett Matravers where I lived, cost 55p. 
To put petrol in the tank of my Yamaha YB125 cost £1.64 a gallon (36p a litre) which enabled me to get to work as a trainee land agent in a well known national firm of Chartered Surveyors in Wimborne in Dorset.
What has all this got to do with being a Chartered Surveyor? Well Capital Gains Tax was “rebased” to the 31st March 1982 in the Finance Act 1988. Rebasing is achieved by deeming any asset held at the 31st March 1982 to have been sold and immediately reacquired at its Market Value on that date. The effect is that tax is normally charged only on gains which are attributable to the period since then. As a result, assets that were owned prior to that date have to be revalued as at the 31st March 1982 and this is a job that I am regularly asked to undertake as my role as a Chartered Surveyor/Registered Value at the Stags Wellington office, covering Somerset, West Dorset and East Devon.
As Stags were founded some 150 years ago (and 2024 is a special year for us), we have a wealth of evidence of properties that were sold at that date, particularly those of an agricultural or residential nature, and as a result we can carry out such valuations for properties throughout the South West.
If you or your advisers require a valuation of a property asset as at the 31st March 1982, by all means contact me or your local Stags office, who will be pleased to assist.
PS. As at the 31st March 1982, a Mars Bar cost 20p, Black Jacks 1p (no longer 4 for 1d when I was a child), and of course “I love Rock n Roll” was number 1 in the charts.
