LISA help - savings paid last tax year paid in to this year's tax allowance

Dazjameswalsh

Wondering if anybody can help me. I have a Skipton LISA and paid in the full £4,000 yearly allowance in on Friday 03/04/2020 - tax year 2019/2020. I have checked my account today and noticed that my account shows I have paid in this year's 2020/2021 full allowance and will not be able to pay in any more until 6th April 2021 (tax year 2021/2022).

 I spoke to a representative from Skipton using their live chat and the lady's response was:
"unfortunately you paid this in via bank transfer on the 3rd of April and due to the length of time bank payments take to hit the account it did not hit till the 6th of April as it was the weekend and thy are not processed on none working days and the 6th of April was the start of the new tax year so unfortunately it has gone as this years subscriptions."

Effectively, I have lost out on the HMRC £1,000 bonus for last year, and won't receive the bonus for this year until May(ish) 2021. I have raised a complaint with Skipton regarding this, but wondered if anybody had any advice or if I have any legal backing on this? Can I request the money back (I could put it into an account with better interest) and ask them to waive the fee to take money (this is 25% i believe, equal to the HMRC bonus (except that I haven't been paid the bonus and will lose £1000)

I hope this makes sense, I'm happy to clarify anything if needed. Thank you in advance.

eskbanker

I don't think you have a leg to stand on I'm afraid - there was reference in a similar thread at the time to Skipton's cutoff time (for 2019/20 contributions) being 5pm on Friday 3 April: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6126081/lisa-tax-year-payment

Even if you initiated the transfer before 5pm that day, there would be no guarantee they'd receive and process it in time, so the bottom line is essentially that you left it too late and shouldn't have assumed that a building society would be processing such payments round the clock.

You can withdraw the money if you like, and will get back exactly what you paid in (during the current coronavirus concession), but would lose the bonus and not be able to pay in again until next tax year, so why not leave it there, including the bonus that you'll get in a week or two, and put it down to experience?

badger09

Agree with what eskbanker said about cutoff time.

So, you've missed the chance to add £4k + £1k bonus for 2019/20 but why do you think you'll have to wait until May 2021 for this year's bonus?  
https://www.skipton.co.uk/savings/isas/lifetime-isa/faqs

"HMRC will calculate bonus payments for your Lifetime ISA on a month-by-month basis. Your bonus is calculated on any payments you make into your account from the 6th of the month to the 5th of the following month. Your bonus will be paid into your account within 14 days of the 20th of month two."

The day we receive payment from HMRC, we pay it directly into your account, so you don’t lose any interest".

Dazjameswalsh

Thanks for that @badger09. I was under the impression that the bonus was paid a month after the end of the tax year. Obviously that's always happened as I've paid in at the beginning of April.