Seeking clarity on a possible isa mistake

Rovver125

Opened a cash isa with Halifax last year to stash away funds towards a house.

Rate was 2.75% with an introductory bonus. Will likely be withdrawing most of the funds from this in the coming weeks to buy a house & had planned to open a new isa to start a longer term savings pot.

Interest for the 2012-2013 year was paid into my account on 5th of this month.

Whilst checking my accounts this evening, read this on my isa:

'You can add up to £5,760.00 to this ISA. You can only subscribe to one cash ISA in a tax year. This means that you can’t divide your tax-free cash savings allowance between more than one cash ISA.
Because this cash ISA already contains funds added in the current tax year it is the only cash ISA you can top up.'

The bit in bold obviously refers to the interest paid in by Halifax.

Have I made a schoolboy error in allowing interest to be paid to this isa, thus meaning it is the only one I can pay into this tax year? Should I, or would I have been offered the choice of where this interest was paid?

Apologies if this is a stupid question, I'm an isa novice

innovate

Only money that you deposit counts against your annual allowance. Things like interest or transfers-in do not.

Halifax seem to be somewhat all over the floor with the ISA rules - your report is the third in less than 2 weeks about Halifax not knowing the rules.

If I were you, I would just simply ignore what they say because the only thing that is true in what they say is that you have £5,760 (100%) of your 2013-14 allowance left.

You can deposit this allowance into your Halifax ISA if it still allows deposits, but you can also deposit it into an entirely new ISA with an entirely different provider.

Gordon_the_Moron

As long as you don't pay any new money into the ISA you can open another elsewhere, regardless of what the halfwits at Halifax tell you. How Santander are, or ever have been rated as bad for customer service when they've got these clowns to compete with is beyond me.

System

I'm confused about which years you are talking about.

You opened it last year - 2012/13 ?

They added the interest on 5 March 2013, ie 2012/13

The reference to adding £5,760 refers to this tax year, ie 2013/14.

You haven't added any more cash from any source in this tax year.

p00hsticks

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

They added the interest on 5 March 2013, ie 2012/13

I suspect that they added it on 5th April, but that's still 2012/13, so your point is still correct

Rovver125

Many thanks for the replies.

Just to clarify, I opened the isa during the 2012/2013 tax year. The interest Halifax have deposited was paid on 05/04/2013.

Then I saw the bit in bold in my OP which confused me & I assumed this meant I was tied to my Halifax isa for the 2013/2014 tax year, which I don't want, as the introductory rate will revert to the standard variable rate soon which was less then 1%.

Obviously want to open the best paying isa for the 2013/2014 tax year to maximise interest for new savings!

Ignore their statement & open a new isa then?!

innovate

Rovver125 wrote: »

Obviously want to open the best paying isa for the 2012/2013 tax year to maximise interest for new savings!

you mean 2013-14?

Rovver125 wrote: »

Ignore their statement & open a new isa then?!

Well, may be. I am confused as to what happened when with your ISA, what you have deposited when, what Halifax told you when, and what you are planning to do.