The Lemon Fool

If you open a account with a new broker by dropping £20K of unused yearly allowance into its ISA, but after using it for a while decide its not for you, sell all holdings to cash and withdraw that cash/close the account, can you then drop £20K into your prior brokerages ISA? Or do you have to go through the process of transferring the ISA?

Once you've contributed £20K into any ISA in a tax year then that's it, no more contributions allowed into any scheme, existing or otherwise [for that tax year]. So if you want your new ISA contents to be held in your old ISA account then you have to transfer in order not to lose the tax wrapper.

y0rkiebar wrote:Once you've contributed £20K into any ISA in a tax year then that's it, no more contributions allowed into any scheme, existing or otherwise [for that tax year]. So if you want your new ISA contents to be held in your old ISA account then you have to transfer in order not to lose the tax wrapper.

Can't disagree. But it assumes that the OP has done what he asks.

DON'T do that. If you do it is as said.

Instead ask that the ISA is transferred. That should work.

You are not allowed to put into different brokers either. So you can't put 10k into two different brokers the same year even within ISA limits.

I had to fess up to the tax man when I accidentally made a payment into the wrong broker.

You are allowed to transfer brokers.

Gerry557 wrote:You are not allowed to put into different brokers either. So you can't put 10k into two different brokers the same year even within ISA limits.

I had to fess up to the tax man when I accidentally made a payment into the wrong broker.

You are allowed to transfer brokers.

As respects to transfers, as far as I can tell, you can transfer 1/2 to one provider and the other to another, preferably at different times.
The point is that you need to transfer ISA status.

Quite why closing an ISA should be different escapes me, but experience showed that it is.

Urbandreamer wrote:

Gerry557 wrote:You are not allowed to put into different brokers either. So you can't put 10k into two different brokers the same year even within ISA limits.

I had to fess up to the tax man when I accidentally made a payment into the wrong broker.

You are allowed to transfer brokers.

As respects to transfers, as far as I can tell, you can transfer 1/2 to one provider and the other to another, preferably at different times.

Only for previous years subscriptions. For current year ISA subscriptions you can only transfer the whole amount, otherwise you'd just be getting around the only-one-broker rule.

I.e. if you stick £20K into an ISA with broker A this tax year and half way through the tax year you decide you also like the look of broker B's ISA, then you can only transfer the whole of the £20K to B, not any less. However if you wait until next tax year you can split up the existing (now previous year's) £20K as many ways as you like and transfer it to as many other brokers' ISAs as you want.

https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts/transferring-your-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.

Thanks for the replies.

Going to move from ii to Interactive Broker, initially opening a ISA with IB with this years £20K allowance. But had the thought that if I did that but didn't like IB I was contemplating my options and wondered if it would have been OK to close out the cash and ISA with IB and add that into ... wherever (either with ii or another new brokerage). But I'm now pre-warned that's not viable and that a transfer should be performed instead. Thanks.