There are a lot of options when it comes to s: Ls and Js, Investment, Cash and Peer to Peer (to name a few). But how many of these s are you allowed to have? There is quite a lot of freedom with these kinds of accounts but there are some legislated limits which are important to know if you’re considering opening one – or many. Luckily, we’ve gone through type by type – and we’ve got all you need to know.
What’s the ISA limit?
One of the big things you need to know about opening an ISA is that there is a government-legislated limit on how much you can put into an ISA or ISAs each tax year. This can change each year, but has stayed the same for the last couple years.
Your ISA allowance is £20,000 this tax year (2020/2021).
That’s a whopping £20,000 you can put away in a tax-free wrapper keeping the returns safe from income or capital gains tax. There are some limits within this: for example, you can only put up to £4000 per year into a Lifetime ISA and you can put £9000 into a Junior ISA.
How Many ISAs Can I Open?
There are also limits on how many ISAs of each type you can open each year. To explain all of this, we’ve gone through type-by-type to explain these, such as:
Cash ISAs
You are allowed to open as many Cash ISAs as you want each tax year.
There is also no limit on the number of Cash ISAs you can hold as an individual. This means that you can hold as many as you wish, and can really take advantage of the different types of Cash ISA – such as holding your funds in various fixed-term ISAs as well as within an Instant Access Cash ISA.
This allows you to take advantage of the slightly higher interest rates that Fixed Term ISAs offer – while also maintaining some funds in an account where you can instantly access your cash should you need it.
Investment ISAs
You are allowed to open only one new Investment ISA each tax year; there is no limit on the number of Investment ISAs you can hold, as long as each Investment ISA is opened in an individual tax year.
So for each tax year (April 6th-April 5th of the following year) you can only open one Investment ISA; however, if you find a better deal and wish to change your ISA you do have the option of transferring your ISA.
We have a whole blog on what to do when approaching this – it’s very important that you don’t just open a new account, take your money out of your existing Investment ISA and change it’s location yourself. There is a process you need to go through; our blog covers what you need to know.
LISAs
Lifetime ISA accounts are a bit different to Investment or Cash ISAs: you can only hold two Lifetime ISAs as an individual – however, there are further limits on this.
You cannot open both of these accounts within the same tax year, and you cannot pay into both of these accounts during the same tax year.
JISAs
Junior ISAs are fairly strict: you can only have one Junior ISA per child. There is a government-legislated limit of £9000 which can be paid into each JISA per year, which is a very generous allowance, but is subject to change every tax year.
Peer to Peer ISAs
Much like Investment ISAs you can only open one new Peer to Peer ISA each tax year; you can hold as many Peer to Peer ISAs as you want each year, but you can only open one new one each year and you can only pay into one P2P ISA each tax year.