cash isa partial transfer rules

d63

cash isa partial transfer rules query:

hello

i am somewhat confused over this business about only being allowed to transfer all of the cash you subscribe to in a new ISA , rather than part amount of an old ISA

suppose you open a brand new ISA (call it ISA-Y) for this tax year 2018/19 and pay into it, say, £5000, but a few months later ISA-Z comes along which is better, but if you want to open that you would, i think, either (a)have to close out ISA-Y and lose out on any subsequent tax advantages, or (b) go through the ISA transfer process, but then be obliged to transfer the entire £5k to ISA-Z.

But, what happens if instead you already had transferred into ISA-Y some old money, say £6K from an ISA -X opened in previous tax year say 2017/18, so now you have 5K + 6K=11K in ISA-Y.

So, (finally!) my question: are you allowed to make a part transfer of, say, £2K from ISA-Y to ISA-Z? i.e transfer part of the nominal 'old' money carried over from ISA-X, or is the smallest amount you can transfer to ISA-Z actually be £5K, i.e. all of the new money you subscribed this year to ISA-Y? Or do you even have to transfer the entire £11K to ISA-Z even though only 5K of it is actually new money?

(no doubt this is all in some FAQ somewhere, but i can't find this particular scenario alas!)

any help appreciated
thank you
D.

masonic

In a partial transfer, you can choose whether or not your transfer should include the money from the current tax year (in which case it must include all of it). This is a question on most transfer forms. Remember that not all providers allow partial transfers.

Vortigern

If Z is better, why not transfer the whole of Y into it?

...and the whole of X too?