Selling SIP shares/declaring as income?!

[bogues2009]

Hi
As in title: when selling shares tax free after 5yrs in SIP, do you need to declare it as part of your income and therefore reducing your tax credits?
HMRC seems to know no definitive answer to that!
Or only declaring as income profit made on original price allocation?

[bobthepostie]

If you cash before the 5 years it will be paid via payroll and does affect tax credits, as one of the guys in our work found out. At the end of the 5 years i cannot get an answer on whether it is still paid via payroll. You would however have the chance to remove them from Equiniti and transfer into another scheme therefore avoiding payroll when you cash them. Like yourself I cannot get a definitive answer.

[bogues2009]

I just asked again over the phone HMRC and they said that after 5 years it is not part of income(treat like redundancy payment). On webchat they replied:"There isn't any specific guidance for that scenario that stipulates what you must do.."