Isas

If you have made any contributions to the existing isa's since April this year, you cannot open another isa this year. You can only put in

If you have not contributed to the mini cash isa this year, you can open a new mini cash isa this year, and invest upto 3000. Same for the mini stock isa.

If you have not invested in either isa this year, then you could open a maxi isa this year.

At 07:57:22 on 21/10/2006, Me delighted uk.finance by announcing:

Is that true? I thought it was 3,000 each in a mini stocks and mini cash, or 7,000 in a maxi.

You may be right - I know it's 3000 in a mini-cash, but since I don't have more than that in cash to save/invest, I've never looked at mini-stock isa's.

It definitely used to be that with 1000 in an insurancy thingy isa (absolutely no idea what it is/was)

I think the two people who actually knew where/how to buy this 1k mini isa decided they had other uses for their money and I think that now the extra 1k has been added onto the mini shares isa (BICBW)

Tim.

In message , Alex writes

Yes it is. It used to be 3+3 + an extra 1 into an 'insurance' ISA which was stupid idea put there just to keep the industrial branch insurance collectors happy. This idea has now been chucked out and the £1k has been added to the shares component.

That's great thanks.

Ok next question, I have already put money into both ISAs this year but can I switch to another one or will I have to wait until next April?

You will have to wait until the next tax year.

Andrew McP

It depends what you mean by 'switch'.

You can effect a transfer away from a product you have already contributed to this year, to a new product with a different provider, and then you would be able to continue contributing to that new product, so long as you did not max out this year's annual allowance on the old one.

You would have to transfer at least the amount you have contributed this year so far. (You can probably imagine why this is required.) You would then be treated as having, in effect, made those earlier contributions to the new product, for the purpose of calculating your remaining allowance.

Cash Unit Trusts (aka Money Market Funds)?

Gilts with >5 years to maturity?

HTH, Alan

That sort of makes sense. I didn't know you could do that, but if you can, then surely the "so long as you did not max out this year's annual allowance on the old one" restriction doesn't apply. In other words it doesn't make sense to say that it's OK to do (1) below but not (2).

(1) Put £2k into a cash ISA with provider A. Decide ISA A isn't performing well and transfer £2k from there to a new ISA with provider B, then contribute up to another £1k into ISA B.

(2) Put £3k into a cash ISA with provider A. Decide ISA A isn't performing well and transfer £3k from there to a new ISA with provider B, and then make no further contributions to it.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Andrew McP

Cash unit funds can only go into a mini-cash ISA. Look for isagn.pdf on the HMRC web site.

Gilts are fine.

You're right, I took the "so long as" phrase as referring to the whole paragraph and not just to the "continue contributing" bit.

Now that you've explained what you meant, I no longer catch the same meaning when I re-read the original. :-(

I agree, but I think its down to an ambiguity arising from my punctuation.

It may have been better for me to at least have omitted a comma, thus:

"You can effect a transfer away from a product you have already contributed to this year, to a new product with a different provider, and then you would be able to continue contributing to that new product so long as you did not max out this year's annual allowance on the old one."

Although, of course there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Interesting - I wasn't aware of that restriction but my reading of it suggests that /in practice/, you're only going to be able to actually hold money market funds (up to 3K p/a) within a maxi stocks&shares ISA.

I.e. nobody (TTBOMK) actually offers cash UTs in a mini cash ISA...

The fixed interest iShares ETFs will count as stocks&shares - the 'iShares ? Inflation Linked Bond (IBCI)' might be worth a look.

rgds, Alan

I think that L&G did that at some stage. May still do.