I am thinking of selling some old stock I've had for over 20 years to pay off my house. I got laid off from my IT job in Sept 2016 after 38 years and have been living off my savings since then. The stock is valued at 205k and I paid very little for the shares a long time ago, so the actual stock profit is around 200k. I have no income this year so far but I'm thinking about doing some contract work.

I did a little research about this and it looks like if the tax base is 15% then there is no capital gains on stock held over 1 year. Not sure if this is correct or not, but assuming it is, my question is... would I be better off not making any money this year and selling the stock, or take on some contract work. If I take work, how much can I make before I get a tax hit on the stock sale?