Martin Lewis: Should I move my Help to Buy ISA into a Lifetime ISA?

Kasaka

Does anyone know whether transferring money from a h2b isa into a Lisa counts towards your annual 20,000 ISA limit? I transferred £4000 from my H2B (which was funded in previous tax years) into my Lisa this year, and the Lisa provider has said that that £4000 does count towards my ISA limit of £20k - so effectively I only have £16k left to use this tax year. How can that be correct?! I thought that transfers of existing ISAs (i.e. the money you are transferring was originally paid in in previous tax years) never counted towards the £20k allowance. Any ideas? Have searched the web and not found a solid answer.

Samradish

Hello some advice please. I am 30 and I opened a HTB ISA a while ago and currently I have £19,215 in it. Our circumstances have not made us able to buy yet and now I realise we would like to buy in Watford which isn’t in the London borough if I’m correct and our house will be more than 250k so am I right in thinking I should open a LISA and transfer 4k per year into it? We aren’t buying until at least 2/3 years but even if we were to buy in 1 year we still wouldn’t be able to use the government funding in our HTB ISA so the 1k from a LISA would be beneficial if the property is under 450k?  Moneybox are offering a good deal on a LISA. Would you recommend that one? Thanks. Sam. 

LouiseJowett123

My son has a HTB ISA with over £9k in at Natwest. He's opened a LISA elsewhere and knows he can trf £4k over, across 2 tax years, and then the remained. Whilst he cant pay any new funds into the LISA, can he keep payingn into the HTB - I assume the ISA allowance is still £20k per tax year ?