Lifetime ISAs guide

Thanks for the reply. I will post to Skipton tomorrow requesting payment upon receipt. The process is a little unclear and I located a guide which implied each request goes through the solicitor but this wasn't transparent.
Deposited early April so will be paid after 20th May.

Push completion a few days, probably a week to be safe. That’s the only way you can do it.

Your solicitor would need the money in their account the day before completion. If your solicitor is good they wouldn’t think to exchange without some certainty the funds are on their way else you will lose c.6% of your money.

You can do all the prep work in advance. Sending off the forms for Nutmeg to release the funds on the day you want. In theory (although probably would be quicker) they have 30 days to release the funds after receiving the declaration and requests from your solicitor. So start the ball rolling now. Just be clear you do not want the money until on / after the 1 year anniversary. If your money is in funds it will take longer.

Ours was released on the 1 year by HL and we managed to get the 17/18 bonus out in 24 hours in time for completion. But I don’t know whether nutmeg will be as helpful as HL were.

Re the 18/19 money - if you put in you have to know that you will definitely be able to use it for your house purchase or be willing to leave it until retirement. If you need the money or there is uncertainty, don’t do it. Else you will lose 6% of the £4000 which is not insubstantial.

Good luck!!

Rdh181 wrote: »

Hi,

I have an issue with my AJ Bell Stocks & Shares LISA bonus being paid.

I did have a Halifax Help to Buy ISA, and I opened a Skipton Cash LISA last year and put in £1 (to start the 1 year clock and to max the interest in my help to buy ISA) with the intention of transferring the H2B ISA into it before April 2018.

I missed the deadline so opened an AJ Bell S&S LISA which had a later transfer deadline.

AJ Bell have emailed me to say that the bonus can!!!8217;t be paid because I didn!!!8217;t close the Skipton LISA, or transfer the money in that account to the AJ Bell account.

I will be phoning HMRC tomorrow to see if there!!!8217;s anything they can do but I was wondering whether anyone had any ideas on whether HMRC would allow the bonus to be paid - for example, if I transferred the money from the Skipton to AJ Bell now, or closed it now?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Making some assumptions about dates and exactly what you did, your Skipton LISA was your valid LISA for the 2017/18.

Your AJ Bell LISA for the 2017/18 tax year is invalid and any money you paid in or transferred relating to that tax year must be removed and would not be eligible for the bonus or tax free status. As it is a S&S ISA and not a cash ISA, HMRC tend not to be as lenient, but it would be worth phoning them to see what they say. Any part of your Halifax HTB ISA built up during the 2016/17 tax year would be ok to transfer to AJ Bell and eligible for the bonus.

If you'd realised before the end of the tax year and acted very quickly, transferring/closing the Skipton LISA *might* have saved you, but your time ran out on 5th April unfortunately.

Rdh181 wrote: »

Thanks.

In terms of dates:

H2B opened in 2015/16 tax year.
Skipton in 17/18 tax year.
AJ Bell 17/18 tax year.

Not sure that changes anything but can only see what HMRC say I guess.

AJ Bell will need to go through a "repair" process on the LISA and may liaise with HMRC to ensure the correct process is followed.

Assuming you kept up contributions, then the best case scenario is that a significant part of the H2B ISA was transferable without breaking the rules and should be eligible for the bonus. About £2400 (i.e. everything paid in during 17/18) would need to be removed and would not be eligible for the bonus. So it might not be quite as bad as first thought.

Edit: But there is a specific new regulation from the 2017 Act covering transfers from HTB to LISAs that makes the whole transfer ineligible - see below.

sully1311 wrote: »

You're in the wrong here I'm afraid as you are only allowed 1 LISA per tax year. You can phone up to give it a shot but don't be surprised if you can't get your way.

True, but the AJ Bell LISA was funded by a transfer of subscriptions spanning 3 tax years. Two of which do not break the 'invalid combination of ISAs' rule.