How much is my ISA allowance? (2024)

FAQs

How much should I contribute to my ISA? ›

Putting money into an ISA

Every tax year you can save up to £20,000 in one account or split the allowance across multiple accounts. The tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April. You can only pay into one Lifetime ISA in a tax year. The maximum you can pay in is £4,000.

Max out your ISA

The most you can invest in an ISA in any given tax year is £20,000. If you started saving today and the ISA limit remained at £20,000, it would take you 25 years to become an ISA millionaire, assuming an average annual return of 5%.

The Government puts a cap on how much you can put into your ISA or ISAs in any tax year (from 6 April – 5 April). The ISA allowance for 2024/25 is set at £20,000. The ISA limit for Junior ISAs is £9,000 for 2024/25.

In situations where you have saved in excess of this sum in your ISAs in the tax year, you will need to discuss with your ISA providers, the removal of the excess from your ISA, incuding any interest the excess generated, and return it to you. The excess interest is taxable and should be declared. Thank you.

There is no limit to how much money can be in an ISA. The ISA allowance limit applies to how much you can pay in during each tax year (6 April to 5 April the following year). So, as long as you've paid in no more than £20,000 within a single tax year, there's no reason you can't have more than £20,000 in an ISA.

The 4% rule is intended to make your retirement savings last for 33 years, and potentially more. This rate of withdrawals means that most of the money used will be the interest and gains on investments, not principal, assuming a reasonably healthy market return.

While you can't open a joint ISA, married couples can effectively double their ISA allowance, enabling them to shelter up to £40,000 from tax each year. This can be as simple as paying into your spouse's ISA once you have used up your own.

Each tax year, you can split your annual ISA allowance of £20,000 between the different types of ISA you're eligible for. That can include a Stocks and shares ISA, Cash ISA, Lifetime ISA or Innovative Finance ISA. Just remember – a Lifetime ISA has its own limit of £4,000, which sits within your overall allowance.

Frozen ISA allowances for the 2024/25 tax year

Despite some calls for an increase in annual allowances, the government has frozen these limits for this tax year (6 April 2024 - 5 April 2025). This means the overall ISA allowance is still £20,000 per tax year.

According to the most recent HMRC figures, ISA millionaire numbers trebled year-on-year to hit a record high of 4,070 in 2020-21. The average ISA millionaire has a pot of £1.39 million.

What does Martin Lewis say about ISAs? ›

Don't pay tax on your savings interest? Then cash ISAs are probably not for you. If you do, and a cash ISA works, then make sure you check your rates as most earn diddly squat. That's the message from MoneySavingExpert.com founder Martin Lewis in the latest episode of ITV's The Martin Lewis Money Show Live.

Withdrawing from an ISA, unless it's a flexible cash ISA, affects your annual ISA allowance: for most ISAs, when you withdraw money from it, that part of your allowance remains used.

All our ISA accounts have the same sort code and account number. Please make sure you include your ISA roll number in the reference section. This is in a four /nine number format, for example: 4567/987654321. You can find it on our Banking app, Internet Bank, or in your passbook.

At Spring Budget 2024, the government announced the introduction of the UK ISA. The new £5,000 allowance, in addition to the existing ISA allowance, will provide a new tax-free savings opportunity for people to invest in the UK, while supporting UK companies.

The ISA allowance is the maximum you can put into your individual saving accounts per tax year. In the 2024/25 tax year, the maximum ISA allowance for adults is £20,000, of which £4,000 can be paid into a LISA. For Junior ISAs, the limit is £9,000.

Your ISA can only be transferred to another person after your death. If you die, your spouse or civil partner can use an increased one-off allowance called an Additional Permitted Subscription (APS) to inherit your ISA.