Do I need a investment ISA now?

[Angy]

I am a beginner and want to invest long term but with a small amount of money. I did some research on this topic but still don’t get it. I know there is no way I could put £20000 into the ISA this year for example so if this year I only put in £5000, could I put in £15000 next year? Is this the right place to start now for investing for 10+ years? Do I need to open another investment ISA with Free trade if I actually exceeded the £20000 allowence in one year or does it add another £20000 on it? With the basic account, if I am close to earning £12000 in capital gains and £2000 in dividend to start paying capital gain tax, could I just sell it all out so I don’t need to pay and start all over again? Do Freetrade move stocks over to basic to ISA or Ida to basic?

[Freetrade_Team1 (Freetrade_Team)]

@Angy

Is this the right place to start now for investing for 10+ years?

I only have time for a quick answer right now but we wrote a post recently to try to answer this. I hope that helps!

If you need a S&S ISA, will you use Freetrade for it?

Hey ho all, Great thread full of good, meaty debate. There’s nothing I like more than a debate over personal financial strategy, so I thought it’d be good to post some reflections on the ISA. I and the rest of the Freetrade team think the ISA is an amazing invention. It’s unique to the UK to have such a simple, generous, tax-efficient investment account. Many countries don’t have a direct equivalent. So what does an ISA do? It protects your investment capital growth (the increase) from capi…

[Rat_au_van (Emma)]

@Angy

With the basic account, if I am close to earning £12000 in capital gains and £2000 in dividend to start paying capital gain tax, could I just sell it all out so I don’t need to pay and start all over again?

Theoretically I suppose so but why would you do that to yourself? Sounds like a world of pain and looking at spreadsheets to predict dividend returns

£20,000 is the allocation per year. Only 1 per year is allowed and unused allocation doesn’t carry forward

[anon287192]

You can add a max of £20k each tax year to your ISAs (across all types and accounts), but keep everything from prior years. You can keep the same S&S ISA account with a particular company like Freetrade open indefinitely. You can only add new money to 1 S&S ISA account per tax year.

When you’re close to needing to pay tax, you can sell everything and repurchase within a new S&S ISA account. Freetrade do not currently automate this process for you, but may in the future. Once you’re at this point, it’s unlikely you’ll want to switch back to the basic account, unless you are actually “permanently” selling all your investments because you need the cash.

[Dave (Dave Smith)]

@Angy

With the basic account, if I am close to earning £12000 in capital gains and £2000 in dividend to start paying capital gain tax, could I just sell it all out so I don’t need to pay and start all over again?

Capital Gains only applies when you sell and actually get the gain. If you want to avoid it it you wouldn’t sell enough to make that much profit in one year. If you sold everything and made a gain it would count towards your CGT allowance for the year and any further gains the same year that put you over the allowance would be taxed.