Is this bending the isa rules? 16 January at 1:33PM in ISAs & tax-free savings 5 replies 241 views

Markp1984

Hi, all in current tax year to avoid confusion. 

I'm subscribed to s&s isa with fidelity(well under the 20k limit) but I'd really like to top up my vanguard s&s isa too, is there anything to stop me opening up 1x cash isa today, sticking 1k in it, and then transferring it to vanguard a week later?
Thank you! 

eskbanker

That's breaking the rules rather than bending them - all current year money (per ISA type) must be kept together in the same place, so your current year S&S ISA money can either be with Fidelity or Vanguard, but not both.

What would you be trying to achieve by funding both in parallel (that couldn't be done be choosing one over the other)?

MDMD

The HMRC Guidance is clear that you can’t do this

Where the investor transfers current year subscriptions from one type of ISA to another the subscriptions are treated as if they were made to the receiving ISA. For example, if current year stocks and shares subscriptions are transferred to a cash ISA, they are treated as if they made to the cash ISA so the investor is free to subscribe to a stocks and shares ISA following the transfer

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/who-can-invest-in-an-isa-if-youre-an-isa-manager#the-one-isa-of-each-type-per-year-rule

TiVo_Lad

In current year, you can't do this with new money as others have pointed out.

If you have previous year's money in Fidelity you could transfer (some of) it to Vanguard and then replace the moved money with new money in Fidelity as long as you kept to the £20K annual limit in Fidelity.

Markp1984

Ah that's fine, thanks! I thought there must be a catch, I'm topping vanguard up from cash isas from previous years (because of their low platform fees and good service) and fidelity because there's 2 non vanguard funds that I love on there
Thanks for replies, much appreciated

jimjames

Markp1984 said:

Hi, all in current tax year to avoid confusion. 

I'm subscribed to s&s isa with fidelity(well under the 20k limit) but I'd really like to top up my vanguard s&s isa too, is there anything to stop me opening up 1x cash isa today, sticking 1k in it, and then transferring it to vanguard a week later?
Thank you! 

But if you did that at the end of March then it would be fine