Can I transfer money away from an ISA provider while still paying into their Help to Buy ISA each month?

Question

I have a Help to Buy ISA and a regular Cash ISA with one provider, A, who treat both products as one ISA under one wrapper. I've got another older Cash ISA with provider B who over a better interest rate for normal Cash ISAs but a worse deal on Help to Buy.

What I'd like to do is:

• Transfer my regular cash ISA balance, deposited last year, from provider A to provider B
• Continue paying every month into my Help to Buy ISA with provider A

Is this possible? I think the fact I'm paying into (and have already paid into) provider A means I can't pay into provider B this tax year, but as I understand it, transfers have different rules to payments. Apparently I can transfer from A to B after having paid into A, but no article I can find makes it clear if I can continue paying into a different product under the A wrapper after transferring away from A.

Can I transfer from A to B, and still continue paying into A in the same tax year?

To be clear, I know I can only pay non-ISA money into into one ISA provider and I have no intention of paying any money that isn't already ISA money into B. My help-to-buy ISA with A will be the only ISA provider I pay non-ISA money into this tax year.

Answer 1

I think there are actually two separate questions here.

1. Will Provider A allow me to transfer only part of an ISA product to Provider B while keeping the other part in Provider A. Only Provider A can answer this.

2. Will HMRC rules allow me to keep making payments to the part that remained in Provider A. I don't have a definitive source for this, but in my experience where the ISA rules have been unclear about particular edge cases and I have asked HMRC similar questions directly, their answer has always been that they will look at the situation in the round at the end of the tax year (they get summaries from the providers) and as long as you haven't attempted to double-benefit or otherwise get around the limits, they won't have an issue with it.

Answer 2

It is allowed to transfer money between ISAs however you like in one year. It does not count against the limit for how much you can pay into an ISA in a year, nor does it count as paying into two ISAs in the same year. But make sure you transfer the money. Don't withdraw it, then pay it into a new ISA.

If your provider doesn't like you taking money out of one ISA while keeping another, then it's about time you found another provider.