Took out 2 ISAs this year by accident

littlesparrow11

Hi,  Back in May, I moved some money from an non ISA account into a new cash ISA within the same bank. 
I forgot that I had done that and opened another cash ISA in November with a different bank and have realised I have gone over the investment limit.  
I am going to inform the bank of the November one. I'm not sure what happens then. Do I need to let HMRC know? 
Thanks for your help

xylophone

https://community.hmrc.gov.uk/customerforums/pt/7811b169-3a68-ee11-a81c-000d3a0cc0c2#:~:text=You can only have one,first, then that is fine.

eskbanker

littlesparrow11 said:

Back in May, I moved some money from an non ISA account into a new cash ISA within the same bank. 
I forgot that I had done that and opened another cash ISA in November with a different bank and have realised I have gone over the investment limit.

Do you mean that you've contributed more than £20K in aggregate or just that you've exceeded the 'paying into one cash ISA per tax year' limit?

If the former, then are either of them flexible ISAs that would allow you to bring total net contributions below £20K?

You may have options to address this by transferring one into the other so all your current year money is in one place before the end of the tax year....

littlesparrow11 said:

I am going to inform the bank of the November one. I'm not sure what happens then. Do I need to let HMRC know?

The official gov.uk pages advise ISA managers not to tell ISA holders to try to correct such errors themselves and to wait until the HMRC compliance team reviews the situation (after the end of the year):

If you find out (from the investor) that they have subscribed to a disallowed combination of ISAs, or has exceeded the overall ISA subscription limit, you should tell the investor that HMRC will contact them in due course. You should not give any advice to customers, as you may not have all the relevant facts or be certain of the action that HMRC will take.

If the investor wishes to contact HMRC to discuss the error, they can phone the Income Tax general enquiries helpline.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/close-void-or-repair-an-isa-if-youre-an-isa-manager#repair-void

However, anecdotally, HMRC rarely take action against a 'first offender' so it's entirely possible that you'll never hear any more about paying into two cash ISAs, especially when the restriction of 'one ISA of each type per tax year' is being abolished in three months time....