ISA accounts

[Hther]

hi

i thought you were only allowed one ISA at a time but looking online have read that you can only OPEN one ISA a year, so can you keep one old ISA going, and open another, as long as the overall amount is no more than the £3600 allowed?

Also, if you ahve only just opened an ISA, so not allowed to open another yet, but you decided you would have been better with another, can you transfer to another instead?

you can open a new isa each year and put the max in, eg you could have 36,000+ saved in 10 different isas (or however long it has been going) or you could have all that money in one isa.
you can transfer the money in one isa to another if it accepts transfers - which some of the better rate ones don't, but have to follow the process.

Answering your points in reverse order:

From a quick look here you can not open and then transfer your current years isa allowance. It is stuck where you 1st put it until the end of the tax year.

You have an isa allowance per tax year but you do not have to put the next years money into the same account/provider that you have for your current year iyswim. So yes, you can have more than 1 cash isa account open. The key point is that per tax year you are only allowed to put max. 3600 in.

Technically you can actually open more that one cash isa account in a tax year but only if you pay in max 3600 and any other money is sent direct from your existing to new providers. Fwiw, I have done this on more than one occasion.

Also, when moving previous years allowances between providers as long as you open an account that accepts transfers in you do not have to transfer in multiples of 3600. e.g. if you have total 7200 over different accounts you could move 4000 leaving 3200 behind. However it is worth checking t&c of any isa you are trying to move wrt losing interest or similar.

If any of that isn't clear ask away and i'll try and explain myself better.

Disclaimer: only speaking from personal experience. I'm not a IFA!

you CAN open an ISA and then transfer it in the same tax year - see HMRC Guidance

I stand corrected - Thanks ChasingSquirrels