You can only identify the items in the inventory of the person who spoke to the shopkeeper If you switch to the inventory of another character and try to identify you get the usual dialog about the price but clicking yes does nothing.
This was in the last version. In this version you can identify the item but the gold is taken from the inventory of the character who spoke to the shopkeeper. However, the character that has the item has to have enough gold for the transaction. If he does and the first character has no gold then the transaction is free.
