We need your help! Fractional Shares in ISAs

Can’t blame HMRC.

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Met police act 1839 section 54 - illegal to fly a kite in public, no one observed that one.

Just being pedantic, I’ll apologise for that one. But things just take too long, come on, have a chat, get it sorted. After all the more people that look after themselves financially the less they’ll need government help in the future.

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No, you are not being pedantic. Rather, you are arguing using a Logical fallacy.

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It’s funny out of everyone I know around me family included I’m the only one trying the stock market :slight_smile:

I think the usual things you hear is

Its a mugs game

I don’t have time to do all the reading and follow companies

I might lose all my money

I don’t understand it

It’s a scam

Etc etc

Its good some places in the UK are now incorporating finance into classes while trying to revamp maths.

I think the younger generation need finance more than ever considering their high cost lifestyles they live now a days. Brand new audis, bmws etc at age 17, all the fancy make up, tanning, designer clothes, tattoos.

Its not cheap and it seems most of these costs are projected onto the parents from what I have seen with the mentality of if I don’t have it I will seen to be a lesser human or how can I be on social media without showing what I have.

So yes it will be great when more and more join in.

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Education is the very best place to start, given that money, investing, APR, loans, mortgages and credit cards etc. play such an important part in society today a sound understanding of how these work is so important to future financial health. Today, it’s so easy to build up debt without even realising the potential long term consequences or buying and selling stocks and shares on a whim which is more akin to gambling rather than investing.
I think financial education should form part of the national schooling from a very young age.
I remember reading somewhere that money habits are pretty well set from the age of 7. (not sure how true that is)

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Yes I agree with everything you said but would like to add that many investors speculate on a daily basics as well (Gamble).

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Psychology is very interesting, humans - invest £100 (year 1), goes up to £150 (year 2) then drops to £125 (year 3), human psychology “I’ve lost £25 pounds”??? It’s just how most people are made and what drives illogical financial behaviour.
I’m not saying that’s everyone, but it’s his many people think. Nothing made or lost until sold.

What are the implications for Freetrade business model is the rules are not changed?

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At a guess it would place limits on ISAs to hold only whole shares however with plenty of appeals this could be knocked down the road.

The rather ungainly workaround would be for Freetrade to create lots of one-stock ETFs. They’re not to most elegant solution but if HMRC realised that existing they’d be stupid not to acquiesce.

Freetrade could create single-stock ETF’s for the top 30 most popular stocks and then have narrow theme ETF’s to cover the rest ie Housebuilding, Auto manufacturing …

A happy upside would be the ability to set the price at £5/£10 Which would retain the ability to invest in Apple, Microsoft et al cheaper than you could on other platforms. Setting a TER of say 0.5% and refunding 0.4% to Freetrade customers.

shhhh 🤫

@acamp you can claim this as your idea if you want, nobody else from FT seems to spend much time around these parts anymore :wink:

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Good question. It is not clear to me that it really makes a whole lot of difference to Freetrade revenue or profits. But only Freetrade can tell us exactly. Also note We need your help! Fractional Shares in ISAs - #65 by belvedere.

Freetrade would need regulatory approval to create, manage and sell such funds. Not really a HMRC issue.

It won’t be a simple step nor one that would be considered particularly appealing however HMRC rules stifle investment. Getting HRMC & FCA to sing from different song sheets should get the attention of senior officials.

Is anyone a constituent of West Leeds? I bet this is the sort of thing the shadow chancellor (and economist) would like to take a run at.

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The ISA rules explicitly allow ETFs. HMRC does not suggest otherwise.

Should Freetrade wish to engage in any fund creation or management it will have to apply for and get approval to do so. This is a separate matter and I’ve no idea how long it would take to be granted permission - today it does not have regulatory approval to trade in this way. It is the FCA which oversees this not the HMRC.

What’s the general consensus if you were to round up all holdings to a full share? I assume HMRC will still class the original holdings as non compliant if there is no change to the rules. I personally don’t hold fractional shares but trying to understand how they are actually going to enforce this.

Hey @NeilR

While I can’t say exactly how this may play out, our goal is to ensure as little impact as possible on ISA customers. In cases where there has been a breach of the ISA rules HMRC has publicly stated that any back tax is recovered from the ISA manager (Freetrade).

I don’t think it’s right to draw the conclusion that you have done - the holdings in your ISA account are representative of a proportional beneficial claim to whole shares held in our custody account.

We’ve just published late last week a brief overview of the situation, a few steps we’re planning to take, as well as things that ISA customers can do right now (if they wish).

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I have no problem with making fractional shares available to get more people investing but thre should be an option in app to turn this off becuase 3 times now I have postioned how much I want to spend on new shares and teh trade has gone through with fractional shares that I dont want. I dont wnat fractional shares it should be easy to turn this off without having to do a limit buy.

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That’s functionality that we’re prioritising building in the next month or so!

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I would like this too…thank you

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Sweeeeeet

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