You can only invest with one company in each tax year ie. one cash and one stocks and shares (if you want both).

However, you can have as many prior year ISAs with as many providers as you want. Most people find it easier to have just one (particularly for shares where there are no advantages to splitting it as one provider will offer all the funds or stocks you might want to hold) as it makes the admin easier.

Hi

Am I correct in saying that I can split my Cash ISA allownace for the year 2011 into any number of CASH ISA's with different cmpanys e,g

£1000 cash ISA with Company A,

plus £2000 Cash ISA with company B,

plus £2500 Cash ISA with Company C

Or can I only invest my yearly allowance with ONE company for the year 2011?

The same scenario question applies to stocks and shares ISA.

ISAs are only available to UK residents as they get tax breaks so you are correct that if you move abroad you will have to relinquish your ISAs.

However, you can 'gift' money to your parents and they can invest it however they see fit. Your plan would only work if they do not plan to use their own ISA allowance. You would loose all legal control of the money as it would be an outright gift and if they died it would be added to their estate and distributed in accordance with their will (if they have one) or in accordance with intestancy if they don't (if you an only child and they are going to leave everything to you in their will you have no worries on this score).

Furthermore, in order to get the money back to you they would have to 'gift' it back to you. There could be potential Inheritance Tax issues with this plan; if your parents estate is worth anything ovwer £650,000 then this could be bad planning as you could end up paying up to 40% IHT on the money, which does compare favorably with other types of investment.

I have no idea what would be available in Oz but they probably have something similar as they are a pretty forward thinking country.

Any help?

Cheers

Thank You SSAS Guru i think this prettymuch covers most of what i need to know for now. there is one additional question that i do have and its regarding ISAs and then leaving the UK, since i have been considering a move to austrailia...

I have read that as soon as i move i woud have to withdraw my money from the ISA, which would be fine and understandable, but could i perhaps have someone else invest my money for me under their name, considering i can actually trust the persone to not steal all of my savings (im sure my parents wouldnt bother too much with it) but would there be any legal implications that i might face for havng savings under someone elses name invest money for me

ive not looked into the australian financial side of things so i dont know if theres anything better (im quite sure they dont do anything similar) im just asking on the hypothesis that UK ISAs are better for investing than the Oz equivalent.

The ISA 'cap' only relates to new money you pay from your current bank account into an ISA account. Once it's already in an ISA (from a previous tax year) you can ignore it as it won't affect how much you can pay into a new ISA in any following tax years.

Yes, the max you will be able to pay into an ISA will be £11,280 from 6th April 2012 with the max into a cash ISA being £5,640. That limit would apply if you had existing ISAs of £1 or £1,000,000 and whether they are all in separate banks or all lumped together.

So if i had from my ISA 2011/12 after maturity approx £5,300 and transfered into another ISA would the cap for that ISA be £11,280 (if it were to go to stocks and shares) or £5,640 thus giving me the option to invest only £340 (or £5,980 into stocks and shares) into that ISA. and then allowing me to open anothher ISA at £5,300 (£10,980 stocks and shares)

Will the max i can invest in the 2012/13 ISA be £11,280 or can i invest that additionally to my current ISA after transferring it? giving me approx £16,000 in 2012/13 ISA?

Yes, just remember that the allowance relates to NEW money being paid into an ISA and you get an allowance each tax year.

You can transfer an existing ISA as many times as you want, as long as you transfer to another ISA.

You could end up with many different years of ISA allowances all invested in the same bank account on the same deal. The trick is to check out the best deal available each April when you invest your allowance and then transfer your existing ISAs into this account to get the best deal (you will be able to complete just one form and fill in the sections for the new ISA and for the transfer as well).

Does this help?

Hello SSAS Guru

Thank you for your comments :)

Would this mean that when my current ISA matures and i transfer it to another ISA at the end of this tax year, i can then open up another ISA because my allowance has not been affected by this transfer? I take it that assuming i can transfer the ISA and if i want to top it up to the full amount that this top up will affect how much i can put into the new ISA?

Would that then mean it possible (over a period of a few years) to have multiple ISAs and could i have ISAs all within the same bank, with the same deal?

There are two elements that you are confusing yourself with here I think.

1. Yearly ISA allowance

2. Maturity of your 12 month Cash ISA investment.

Let's deal with each one separately:

1. Your ISA allowance for the 2011/2012 tax year is £10,680 . However, only half of this (£5,340) can be paid into a Cash ISA. The remainding £5,340 must be paid into a stocks and shares ISA, or just left unused. You get an ISA allowance each tax year and the ISA allowance for the 2012/13 tax year will be £11,280 (half of which can be paid into a cash ISA).

2. It sounds like you have taken out a 12 month fixed rate deal. If you do nothing the account will continue and you will revert to the bank/building society's standard rate (which is usually much lower than the offer rate which they advertise to hook you in). You can simply transfer the account to another bank who are offering a better deal. Once the money is in the ISA you can switch it around from bank to bank and this does not count against your allowance as it is already in an ISA.

You can take out as much as you want, whenever you want. However, if you 'tie-in' the cash buy getting a 12 month fixed rate deal then encash after 6 months say, the bank will deduct a significant amount of interest from you as you have not kept the money with them as agreed at the beginning of the term. If you wait until the deal matures you will get the full amount of interest (tax-free) and then can take out whatever you want without penalty.

I hope this helps?

I cant seem to find anything that answers my questions specifically so ill ask here :)

Ive set up a 1 year isa for the tax year 2011/12 with about 5k in it, so it will mature in april of this year. When it matures what happens to the isa account? can i then reinvest the 5k plus the interest AND an additional 5k into the account that i will be elligible to invest as of the tax year 2012/13? and can i repeat this process until the end of time or at elast until the end of my career?

Also if i was to do this method but decide somewhere say, 2014 that i wanted to buy something expensive, would it just be a case of when it came round to reinvesting in the isa i would just not reinvest as much or would this damage my isa bonuses (because i would not have as much to reinvest that year, maybe 2k instead of 5k for example)?

basically whats the best way of working my isa? i would rather not open and clsoe new isas all over the show, this will just get confusing...

also is it possible to have 2 isas on the go or is this a waste of time since my allowance would be to say invest 5k between the two each year where i would probably be better just investing all 5k in the one spot?

hopefully ive not made this too confusing but i am quite confused right now...