Freetrade ISA UK advice

My wife and I have never owned an ISA before. I have a couple of questions and I’d really appreciate any help.

1] I have £16k to invest. Can my wife and I open a Freetrade S&S ISA individually? Even though we are a married couple.
2] If so, can I put £4k into both, to reap the benefit of the 3% interest monthly payment twice?
3) If I do this today, can we both open another Freetrade S&S ISA again in April?

Thank you to this kind community for your time. :slightly_smiling_face:

yes you can both open your own ISAs

Yes, though you may wish to look at investments that may be better than just leaving money uninvested. the 3% is great for when you have that money waiting for an investment though.

No need to open a new ISA. Your allowance will reset, there’s no requirement to open new accounts each year.

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As far as I know, you can only get the 3% interest with plus, which costs £119.88 a year.
3% on £4k would be £120 in a year (assuming I haven’t goofed the maths) so you would make a massive 12p a year :smile:

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Just to add that you would need to open the ISA’s in each of your names with different bank accounts. You can then put £4k into each respective bank account to then fund your ISA.

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It also essentially becomes her money.

And as mentioned the 3% interest is for plus accounts

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If they are married it makes very little difference.

If they were to separate everything would be split equally anyway regardless of whose name assets are in.

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Oh yeah just useful to know for finances. He has to gift/give the money to her for her to use, it’s not a joint account and no longer ‘his money’ so how it’s invested or spent is largely up to her. Though obviously most people agree on a course of action together :smile:

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Thank you everybody.

When you open a Freetrade ISA, do you need to close all your general account investments and move your money over to the ISA? Then start your investments again?
Or are the perks of the ISA applied to your general account?

It’s completely separate.

You will retain a GIA account - and have a new ISA account as well.

You can request cash be transferred from your GIA account to the ISA - but you can’t transfer shares in from a GIA (with Freetrade or any provider).

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Yes you would need to sell your GIA holdings and re purchase them in the ISA.

If you contact support when you want to do this then they should be able to do this for you

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Is it also the case? That you can only contribute to 1 ISA throughout the year. ie: I open an ISA today stick £4000(1st ISA) in and then I open another in April and stick £4000(2nd ISA) So would it be the case that throughout 21/22 I can only add contributions to the 2nd ISA and then in 22/23 I can contribute to the 1st ISA and I can’t contribute to the 2nd ISA again until 23/24. All the aforementioned could be Bull***t. :crazy_face::crazy_face::crazy_face:

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Yes you can only add new money into one ISA of each type per year. But you can also transfer ISAs instead of having multiple

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You can only pay into one S&S ISA per tax year but you can continue to use both.
E.g. At the end of March you could top up ISA 1 with anything up to the remainder of your current year’s allowance, let’s say that’s £5k.

April the 6th you open another S&S ISA 2 and add some money. This is now the only S&S ISA you can add money to for the rest of the tax year but you can continue to trade within both, i.e., you’ve still got £5k to play with in ISA 1 and you can continue to buy / sell within that ISA as well as ISA 2 - just don’t add new money to ISA 1.

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What are the tax differences between GIA and ISA?

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You don’t pay any tax on anything in an ISA

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Thats what I thought. I’d rather look daft and ask the question instead of getting chased by HMRC. Whats the tax situation on GIA?

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For the current tax year you have a tax-free dividend allowance of £2,000. And a capital gains tax-free allowance of £12,300. i.e. you can make £12,300 of profit/gains from selling shares this tax year and earn £2,000 of dividends without having to pay tax.
Allowances may change in future years.

More info:

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Awesome I only have £100 in my gia so I don’t need to declare that? I started it before I started my isa and just left it

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No not typically, I believe you would only need to declare that if you are already registered for self-assessment

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Ah OK, so if you’re registered for self assessment, even if you’re below the taxable threshold you’ll still need to declare it?

How is the proffit equated? Is it only once I’ve withdrawn from my Freetrade account? In which case, is there a simple way of working out the actual profit margin?

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