We're often expounding on the benefits of investing your capital within a Stocks & Shares ISA to protect your long-term returns from the tax man. But for those who want to save for a more immediate goal than retirement, such as home improvements or a deposit on a property, your interest earned on cash is just as safe from the tax man when held in a cash ISA.
March is traditionally the time at which all savers rush to max out their ISA allowance before the end of the tax year—a habit many of us are guilty of, but which makes little sense when a year’s worth of potential savings is drawing to an end. Instead, make the most of tax-free saving from the word go and set up your ISAs—cash or stocks and shares—at the start of the new tax year. That’s now. You’ll also get another change in July when the government’s recently-announced new ISAs, NISAs, come into effect with an annual limit of £15,000.
“It would be great if the introduction of the NISA were to spark up another ISA season in July,” says Anna Bowes of SavingsChampion.co.uk. “However, as this ISA season has illustrated, there is still no real desire from providers to draw in funds from savers.”
Without this competition, the concern is that allowing potentially much larger sums to be transferred into cash ISAs could see providers actually restricting transfers into the best rates available, Bowers adds.
For savers wishing to get in early and start their tax-free saving now, SavingsChampion.co.uk have put together the below tables with key information on the cash ISAs with the best rates this new 2014-1015 tax year.
