New HtB when already have Cash ISA

Jakeyoh

I wish to take advantage of the Help To Buy Isa before November. I already have a Cash ISA and have reached my £20k tax free limit as a deposit for 2019/20.

Am I right in thinking I can open a HtB and then only transfer money from my current ISA into this as you can not deposit more than £20k per financial year? (Providing the ISA I have allows withdrawals etc?)

Thanks in advance.

eskbanker

You're right that you can't pay any new money into any ISA this tax year if you've already used your full allowance.

Did you pay into your cash ISA prior to this year?

If so, you can selectively transfer previous year money from there into a new HTB ISA.

If not (i.e. all the money in the existing cash ISA is 2019/20 money) then you'd only be able to do a partial transfer to an HTB ISA if it's with one of the providers offering split ISAs, you could do a transfer of this year's £20K to one of these if necessary.

hgt

I was in a similar position as I had maxed out my ISA allowance for this tax year, and my money from previous tax years was in a fix which could not be touched.

I got around it by transferring the whole of my ISA (the one with the contributions from the current tax year) to Nationwide (just one of their standard cash ISA's). Then opened a HTB ISA with them, and now I'm able to transfer money every month from the ISA to the HTB ISA.
I believe you can do something similar with Natwest also.