Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs)

Anyone, who is an income tax payer and has some money to save or invest should know about Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs). ISAs are wrappers within which a wide range of savings and investment products can be held, free of UK income and capital gains tax by anyone aged 18 or over (16 or over for Cash ISAs).

ISAs serve as a ‘wrapper’ to fully protect savings from tax, allowing individuals to invest monies up to maximum limits (by way of regular contributions or single amounts) each tax year in a range of savings and investments and pay no personal tax at all on the income and/or profits received. The main ISA benefits are:

There are four types of ISA:

All of your annual allowance can be invested in any one ISA type, or you can split it between more than one type, with either the same or a different provider. The overall annual limit is £20,00, whilst for a Lifetime ISA, it is £4,000.

You are able to transfer money saved in previous years’ Cash ISA holdings to Stocks & Shares ISAs and vice versa without affecting your current year’s annual allowance. Innovative Finance ISAs can only be transferred to other ISA wrappers once outstanding loans have been repaid as cash, whilst it is also possible to transfer existing ISA funds into Innovative Finance ISAs.

If an ISA saver in a marriage or civil partnership dies, on their death, their surviving spouse or civil partner will inherit their ISA tax advantages. Furthermore, they will be able to invest an additional amount in their own name equal to the value of the deceased’s ISAs, on top of their usual allowance.