'Bed and Isa' requests soar as CGT and dividend allowance cuts loom

hl.co.uk:

We don’t support this browser anymore.
This means our website may not look and work as you would expect. Read more about browsers and how to update them here.

Newsroom

Newsroom articles are published by leading news agencies. Hargreaves Lansdown is not responsible for an article's content and its accuracy. We may not share the views of the author.

HL Podcast

HL Insight

'Bed and Isa' requests rose by more than 50 per cent in 2023, as UK savers sought to limit the impact of cuts to capital gains and dividend tax allowances.

Article originally published by The Financial Times. Hargreaves Lansdown is not responsible for its content or accuracy and may not share the author's views. News and research are not personal recommendations to deal. All investments can fall in value so you could get back less than you invest.

Published by

09 Feb 2024

Requests to transfer into an Isa those assets that are unprotected from tax rose by 53 per cent compared with the previous year, according to investment platform Interactive Investor.

Bed and Isa involves selling unprotected assets such as stocks, funds and investment trusts and then buying the same assets within an Isa, which allows capital gains and dividends to be sheltered from tax.

The capital gains allowance is set to halve to £3,000 from April, while the dividend tax allowance will also halve to £500. Both had already been halved at the start of the 2023 tax year, from £12,300 and £2,000 respectively.

According to Interactive Investor, requests were up 60 per cent in “Isa season” last year, covering February to the start of April, and 7 per cent year on year in January.

“People are clued up and rushing to shelter their money from taxes on their gains,” said Myron Jobson, a