Withdrawing profit

leonard_ofinchley

2025-26 is the first time that I've held a stocks and shares ISA. Since April it's produced £2300 profit. Am I able to withdraw this, or do I have to wait to the end of the current tax year? 

TadleyBaggie

Check the T&C's but I would expect you should be able to make withdrawals whenever you like.

On-the-coast

As above - but don’t forget that due to the fluctuating nature of shares, if you withdraw all your “profit” you will almost certainly end up in loss fairly soon on what remains.    

You shouldn’t think of it as a short term savings account. 

FrugaiMacDugal

Not sure if you can just withdraw 'profit'.

You may have to sell some of the shares that made that 'profit'.

jimjames

leonard_ofinchley said:

2025-26 is the first time that I've held a stocks and shares ISA. Since April it's produced £2300 profit. Am I able to withdraw this, or do I have to wait to the end of the current tax year? 

Why do you want to withdraw it and where will you put it? The whole idea of investment is to compound returns long term, if you draw out every time you make a profit then you won't gain from that.

leonard_ofinchley

As this is the first stocks and shares ISA I've held,  I didn't know if at the end of the tax year you could move,  including the profit to a new provider. I now believe that you can move the total. It's this correct? 

Albermarle

The restriction is only that you can not add more than £20K in new money each tax year. There is no restriction on the amount you can later transfer.

However the best way to make money from investments in a S&S ISA is normally to buy them and hold them long term. Plus changing provider is really a minor issue, compared to the performance of the actual investments that you hold. 

jimjames

leonard_ofinchley said:

As this is the first stocks and shares ISA I've held,  I didn't know if at the end of the tax year you could move,  including the profit to a new provider. I now believe that you can move the total. It's this correct? 

It's understandable if you've never had a S&S ISA before that you're unsure about the logistics but unlike cash ISAs there is no need or indeed benefit in moving ISAs each year. However it's exactly the same as cash ISAs that the all the money can be transferred to another ISA when you want, whether end of year or any other time.

 As with cash ISAs everything inside the ISA is completely tax free and anything withdrawn will lose the tax free benefit. Unless it's a flexible ISA then you won't be able to pay that money back into the ISA without using your allowance. Some people have S&S ISAs worth well over £1 million thanks to the growth of their portfolio having only paid in £300k or so and withdrawing will reduce that as you won't pay that back in.

The tax benefit of a S&S ISA is not needing to worry about either income or capital gains tax. All income paid from an ISA is tax free so the person with £1 million getting 4% dividends could earn £40,000 per year and not pay a penny in tax so can be useful alongside other sources of income.

I've had ISAs for the last 25 years but have only needed to move them around 5 times in that period. Reasons for moving could be that your portfolio has grown so now is more cost effective with a different platform, your current platform changing their charging basis or needing to access different investments not available on your existing one.