Flexible ISA Question

zagfles

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82081104#Comment_82081104

I don't understand why you're struggling with this. Your used allowance in any flexible ISA will always be deposits in the tax year minus withdrawals in the tax year. If it's negative (ie you made more withdrawals than deposits) then you've withdrawn previous tax years' money which can be deposited back into the same ISA but not a different one. Your used allowance over all ISAs can't exceed 20k at any point. So your used allowance is now £3.2k, which means you can't deposit more than £16.8k into ISAs at this point in time.

Used allowance in a flexible ISA = sum of deposits minus sum of withdrawals in the tax year

Used allowance is a non-flexible ISA = sum of deposits in the tax year

Used allowance over all ISAs mustn't exceed £20k at any point

If used allowance in a flexible ISA is negative then the allowance for other ISAs is not increased (ie it's still 20k)

surreysaver

The rules are that you should not have more than £20k of this year's allowance deposited at any one time.

Whether the mechanisms are in place to detect this is another question, as exact dates and times of movements of money would be required to be sent to HMRC (I've moved money in and out on the same day, for instance).

And if detection mechanisms are in place, then I would have thought they would throw up false positives as well