Can I withdraw from last year's S&S ISA and put into this year's S&S ISA?

summersetsheep

I have two S&S ISA accounts and one I am subscribed to this year.

Can I withdraw cash from last year's ISA and place it into this year's one?

steelbru

It may just be the way you have worded it it, but you don't want to "withdraw" cash from a previous S&S ISA if intending to keep it tax free.

You can transfer "in situ" any stocks/shares you have to another ISA provider if you are happy with the funds/shares you have and are just looking to change platform.

Or if you want to change what you hold, as well as change platform, you can sell them in your current provider, then transfer the cash to a new S&S ISA provider and buy alternative stocks and shares.

Both the above scenarios will keep the money in the ISA tax-free wrapper.

Some companies will charge you a set amount ( eg £25 per stock/share holding when doing a transfer to a new provider, so if you have multiple funds/shares it can potentially be cheaper to switch in your current provider into just one fund/share and transfer that, depending on platform dealing costs etc )

atush

Technically yes, but to keep this year's allowance in full, you would transfer and not withdraw.

As a side note, you can transfer from cash to S&S isas w/o withdrawing as well.

Vortigern

summersetsheep wrote: »

I have two S&S ISA accounts and one I am subscribed to this year.

Can I withdraw cash from last year's ISA and place it into this year's one?

Yes, you can. It will use your current year ISA allowance.

Or you could do a partial ISA transfer as cash. This will preserve your allowance but may incur charges from the losing ISA provider.

Or you could possibly transfer your stock in specie as suggested above. Again preserving allowance but incurring charges from the loser.

summersetsheep

My allowance for this year is currently 15,240. (The whole amount)

Thanks guys. So what you're saying is, if I take the cash (say £100) from this old ISA - which was income generated by last year's allowance and putting it into the new one would reduce this year's allowance by £100 ? As that would be a 'withdrawal' rather than 'transfer'.

I have some stray cash that was received as dividends. I do not want to buy anything in this ISA with the cash as I intend to use the new one. All the stocks would remain invested. I do not want to move any stocks from one to the other.

So if I did what I was planning to do, I would be 'wasting' that allowance for this year because I took it out and put it back in again.

summersetsheep

Thanks Vortigern

Doing a partial transfer for £25 with Hargreaves is just not worth it for the amounts it is.

What do you guys usually do? Just hold it until the dividends amount to something or just accept that you would be wasting allowance?

Vortigern

You can re-invest the dividends from ISA#1 within ISA#1. This is permitted and does not use any of your allowance. The whole of ISA#1 is considered to be previous year's money.

At the same time you can subscribe new cash to ISA#2, and you can re-invest the dividends from ISA#2 within ISA#2.

Having said all that, I wouldn't be bothered about not using £100 worth of this year's allowance.

droopsnoot

It all depends on how close to the annual allowance you will come. If you're intending to use the full £15k-odd with new money for ISAs this tax year, then it will make more sense to try to transfer from the old to the new. If the total you want to move, plus the total "new money" for this year, will still fall below your allowance, then it doesn't make any difference.