ISA & Personal Allowance after April

jimjames

Bango wrote: »

There is only me and i earn 24k a year so i'll be in the lower tax limit.
I've got £31000 sat in a fixed rate bond earning 2.28%, £2000 in a tsb current account at 5% plus the linked regular saver (both only recently opened) £40,000 in an account earning 1.41% and around 30k sat in various account with of 0.25% to 0.80% - these are gross interest rates.

So a total of £73k in cash. Are you planning on buying a house or some short term purchase using it? Depending on your age and pension arrangements you may want to look at alternatives to cash for part of the money if you have no plans to spend it in the near future. Obviously you still need an emergency cash fund which may be different amounts depending on your circumstances but maybe £10-30k for other options like S&S ISA or pension would be worth considering.

YorkshireBoy

jimjames wrote: »

Effectively the rule still stands because these providers consider that different ISA products are still ONE ISA for the purpose of regulations.

Indeed. As per the linked article...

They've structured themselves so they can allow different versions of their ISA to count as one.

masonic

Bango wrote: »

Where should i be looking for better rates if i don't want a stocks and shares ISA and don't have the direct debits required to open the better rated current accounts?

It is quite easy to find information about how to acquire the necessary direct debits to open better rated current accounts if you have the motivation to do so. It doesn't pay to advertise these in every thread discussing the subject because we want these options to remain available and not get shut down.

There are other accounts mentioned in the following threads:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/401374
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5374614 - you'll need to check which of these require DDs - not all do.

RobDewar

Hello. Apologies if the answer is already above and I've missed it but I'm a little confused about the rules around the ISA limits in terms of amounts and products. I opened a Help to Buy ISA this year but there is a £200 per month payment limit on that and I have more savings to put in. I was planning to open another ISA in the next tax year for my additional savings in excess of the £200 per month but the rules for one bank said that I can't pay into 2 ISAs in the same year. Is that right? I understood that you just can't open 2 ISAs in the same year. Can I still fund both as long as I don't go over the overall limit?

Hope that makes sense...

bowlhead99

No as a general rule you can only put new money into *one* cash ISA at a time. So one of them being a "new" one doesn't allow you to keep paying into the old one. You'd be breaking the rules about putting new money into two ISAs at a time.

The exception as noted in post #8 and #11 is where a bank or building society has agreed to do the recordkeeping for two or more of their own ISA products and simply record one total amount of subscriptions to HMRC as if it were one big account.

So for example you could do Nationwide's help to buy ISA and also one of their other cash ISAs because they let you "split" your current year subscriptions into two buckets with two account numbers and tell HMRC it is only one current year product. However, you couldn't do Halifax's help to buy ISA and then be paying into Nationwides ISA for the rest of your allowance at the same time.

Of course you could easily do Halifax's help to buy ISA up to that scheme limits and save the rest of your spare money *outside* of an ISA - e.g. nationwide have a current account and a regular saver account that each pay 5% which will be more after tax than any short term ISA you'll find.

LXdaddy

Pardon me but I simply can't remember the current rule... is it still possible to put *new* money into a CASH ISA and into a S&S ISA?

roddydogs

What has the new limits in April got to do with anything, you should already be doing it!

frank777

£1,000 tax free limit does not always apply - depends on your taxable income

HM Revenue & Customs
HM Treasury
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/personal-savings-allowance-factsheet/personal-savings-allowance

Personal Savings Allowance: latest information
Updated 8 February 2016
''abridged extract''

In really simple terms
''If your total taxable income is less than £17,000 you won’t pay tax on any savings income'' (E&OE)

le_loup

LXdaddy wrote: »

Pardon me but I simply can't remember the current rule... is it still possible to put *new* money into a CASH ISA and into a S&S ISA?

Yes but only for the TOTAL of the current years allowance.

jimjames

roddydogs wrote: »

What has the new limits in April got to do with anything, you should already be doing it!

Doing what? It may help to quote the post you are replying to.

The new limits in April do have a lot of importance as they make cash ISAs even more irrelevant for even more people as the OP has demonstrated.