Apologies for what has doubtless been asked before in various guises, but I'm not entirely familiar with the ins and outs of ISAs, so these may seem rather daft.

I currently have approximately £4,600 which I wish to put into Cash ISAs. As I understand it, for this tax year, I can only use £3,600 for that purpose. So here is my question (in general terms, clearly either scenario requires the specific ISA to allow transfers).

If I put £3,600 into a Cash ISA now somewhere - say, institution "A" - then in 12 months time I may wish to add the extra £1,000. At that point, would I be able to transfer the current ISA to, say, institution "B", AND add the extra £1,000 to it there? Or would the transfer count as my entitlement? This is partly (clearly) with the likes of the 12 months 'bonus' rates in mind, and as such I suspect it's unlikely to be that simple, so essentially I need to decide whether to go with the high short-term rates or the slightly lower long-term rates.

If the answer to the above is no, then would it be possible to move £2,600 of the original to "B", and add the extra £1,000 to that in "B" to take it to the full quota, leaving £1,000 in "A"? I know that probably seems unnecessarily complicated and pointless, but with respect to what I wish to do with it it makes sense, so it's merely a case of feasibility.

As I understand it, you are right in saying that you can only put £3600 into a cash ISA for the whole of this tax year. But when we come to next year (after April 6th), you can add another £3600 into the same ISA, or put the second £3600 into a different one if you prefer.

You can also transfer the existing one to a new provider who accepts transfers in, and add the new £3600 next year to that, if you find another provider paying better interest at the time.

Forgot to mention, that you need to look after your spare £1000 this year, so check the Moneysupermarket charts for interest rates. You can either put it in a high interest paying easy access savings account until next April, or find a good rate for a one year term, and get it out next July to put into next year's ISA, towards your next allowance.

Thanks very much, was just the transferring then adding to it bit that I was unsure of. And yes, I plan to put the other £1,000 into a savings account elsewhere in the interrim.