Closing an ISA with A&L and opening another with A&L

whosthatgirl1989

I've got an ISA with Alliance and Leicester. I want to close this ISA and open the Easy ISA. It says you cannot transfer funds from an existing alliance and leicester ISA which i'm not bothered about as there is only about £300 in there and theres no way i'll use up my whole £3,600 allowance by april.

If i phone up and close my current ISA, can i then open the Easy ISA with alliance and leicester straight after or will i have to wait until april?

KingL

You can only subscribe to one ISA per tax year, so even if you closed the old one, you wouldn't be able to open another until April.

HMRC rules will allow you to transfer the existing one to another provider, so you could transfer out to, say, Egg instead. Generally, it's a good idea to use as much of each years allowance as you can. If you have funds available, put them in the existing one. You can always transfer it to an alternative ISA provider later on (and subsequently into a 09/10 A&L ISA if you really wanted to!)

Why the interest in A&L? Their current offering is pretty good, but if you can't use it, you can't use it. There are others which are comparable and there will likely be better ones on the market come April...

masonic

whosthatgirl1989 wrote: »

If i phone up and close my current ISA, can i then open the Easy ISA with alliance and leicester straight after or will i have to wait until april?

It depends on whether you've added any funds to your existing A&L ISA during this tax year. If not, you can open the Easy ISA now, otherwise you would have to wait until April.

Whatever you do, you could leave your existing A&L ISA open, close it, or transfer it to another provider.