neilmorgan

Dear HMRC Admin 5 Could you please refer to the reply from HMRC Admin 20 above. You each seem to be saying the opposite to the other? Is transferring (which we all know has to be done by the banks) classed as opening a new account or not? What am I missing? I am already aware that the rule changes due in April 2024 (see government newsletter) will mean we can open multiple accounts of the same type but people still need to move money around in the current 2023/2024 tax year.

I note that the HMRC reply to the post was around the start of January 2024. Please refer to the GOV/HMRC newsletter dated November 2023 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tax-free-savings-newsletter-10/tax-free-savings-newsletter-10-november-2023 "The government announced a package of ISA reforms and will make these changes to ISAs from 6 April 2024:" and "Allow subscriptions to multiple ISAs of the same type, with the exception of Lifetime ISA, within the tax year, removing the limit on subscribing to one ISA of each type per year. All subscriptions must remain within the overall ISA limit of £20,000." Doesn't this mean the HMRC reply is incorrect when the post title clealry refers to April 2024?

The HMRC web site is not very clear on this but the replies by HMRC seem to be at odds with the spirit of the rules at the very least. Most references to ISAs state that you cannot SUBSCRIBE, i.e. pay new money in, to more than one ISA in each financial year. The HMRC website also states "You can transfer your Individual Savings Account (ISA) from one provider to another at any time. You can transfer your savings to a different type of ISA or to the same type of ISA. If you want to transfer money you’ve invested in an ISA during the current year, you must transfer all of it. For money you invested in previous years, you can choose to transfer all or part of your savings." https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts/transferring-your-isa This seems to indicate that you can transfer complete ISA accounts so long as they are untouched this year AND open and pay new cash into a different ISA. Various financial web pages seem to support this view. We also have the situation where the money is only protected up to £85K so you need to have multiple accounts to keep your money safe. On another section in the link above it states "Your ISAs will not close when the tax year finishes. You’ll keep your savings on a tax-free basis for as long as you keep the money in your ISA accounts." Note the plural accountS So my understanding of the HMRC web site information is: 1) You can pay NEW MONEY into ONLY ONE ISA account. 2) You can transfer existing complete ISA accounts (possibly part of the money in an old account?) to new banks.