bloom68
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Post by bloom68 on Jul 15, 2021 16:18:03 GMT
AIUI, Zopa's statement is only correct for current tax year funds. Since your funds with Zopa are previous tax year funds they do need to go back to Zopa and be transferred out to keep their ISA status. Thanks. Yes it's prior year funds that I'd withdrawn, and I'd reached the same conclusion as you, but ZOPA don't seem to be accepting/understanding it. I'm currently on hold with the HMRC ISA helpline to get confirmation, and then I'll try ZOPA again.
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Post by Ace on Jul 15, 2021 16:44:55 GMT
AIUI, Zopa's statement is only correct for current tax year funds. Since your funds with Zopa are previous tax year funds they do need to go back to Zopa and be transferred out to keep their ISA status. Thanks. Yes it's prior year funds that I'd withdrawn, and I'd reached the same conclusion as you, but ZOPA don't seem to be accepting/understanding it. I'm currently on hold with the HMRC ISA helpline to get confirmation, and then I'll try ZOPA again. Page 58 of "ISA Guidance Notes for ISA Managers 31 January 2020" states:
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bloom68
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Post by bloom68 on Jul 15, 2021 17:02:07 GMT
Thanks. Yes it's prior year funds that I'd withdrawn, and I'd reached the same conclusion as you, but ZOPA don't seem to be accepting/understanding it. I'm currently on hold with the HMRC ISA helpline to get confirmation, and then I'll try ZOPA again. Page 58 of "ISA Guidance Notes for ISA Managers 31 January 2020" states: Thanks. I'll raise it with ZOPA again and explicitly point them at the HMRC guidance. I'll report back on the eventual outcome. HMRC advised that if I did deposit the funds into a new ISA, having already subscribed £20k of new funds in the current tax year to another Cash ISA, that it would eventually be treated as a breach of the subscription limits.
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ilmoro
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Post by ilmoro on Jul 15, 2021 23:41:59 GMT
Yep to concur with Ace. Zopa are talking bollocks. You can withdraw current year funds from a flexible and place them into another ISA of a different type but you can't do that with previous year funds or any returns earnt on current year income. They have to go back to the original ISA.
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aju
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Post by aju on Jul 21, 2021 10:28:19 GMT
Now that I have my Zopa funding down to respectable and safer lending level I want to stop withdrawing funds - after i've cleared out my current funds for this month that is in my holding accounts so far. Once i've done that i want to turn reinvesting back on for our ISA accounts and probably direct the funds at Plus for the moment - I haven't really decided what account to fund to at present.
So we both have about £400 in ISA that has been removed from this years allowances (currently 20400) I don't really want to put the £400 back in or worse trigger this years ISA funds as we might find a better ISA that i am comfortable with when our funds come free in Mrs Aju's (Non taxpayer) Zopa Bank Fixed savings account. This is not till October though.
So what I want to do is turn relend back on for our ISA accounts and i have some questions since the new system of lending is nowhere near as clear as the old one in my view.
1. For ISA accounts turn on relend in all products to point at one product (Plus or Core)
2. In non ISA keep lending turned off and remove funds accordingly from Holding accounts.
In option 1 would i be right in thinking that relend across products inside my ISA returns will just be considered as previous ISA funds and not trigger this years ISA funding?.
Bit long winded but Zopa in its need to simplify things (actually complicate in my view) to single screens has made quite a few simple operations in the past much more opaque (Worst one is relend "ON" does not seem to reflect into the main screens at all as far as i can tell.
Anyone got any thoughts I need to consider?.
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Post by fuzzyiceberg on Jul 21, 2021 14:28:49 GMT
Anything in a Zopa ISA account is treated as being in an ISA. No difference between holding, queue or invested. So no impact on current year ISA subscription if you turn relending on.
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aju
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Post by aju on Jul 21, 2021 14:54:24 GMT
Anything in a Zopa ISA account is treated as being in an ISA. No difference between holding, queue or invested. So no impact on current year ISA subscription if you turn relending on. Thx, I thought this was the case. so my next question is can I move funds from the Non ISA to the ISA and use up the £400 I have already removed from the ISA account. I'm guessing not as it's not possible to determine if that funding was the funding removed. I know that up to today that all the funds i have removed from the ISA account have been passed back to our non Zopa bank accounts so the only money that could be feeding that is returned funds to the non ISA account holding. This too is probably stretching it but its not very easy to see that is the case. Since I have not as yet banked the ISA returned money for this month - it's still sitting in ISA holding - can that be reinvested if its less than the amount already returned and showing as withdrawn?. Stet: Just found this ISA FAQ answer that says its a month old! Not sure if its still short on useful info. So I guess I can put the funds back that I have moved to ISA holding area but not yet moved out of Zopa to our banks (we don't have any other ISA's to move across either). Mind you its still not that clear. I wonder if Zopa understands ISA as much as they understand the mess they are making of the current screens ... I'll tread carefully with Mrs Aju's account and see what happens - she does not pay tax anyway and i'm also wondering if Zopa plays fast and loose like banks with ISA accounts having lower rates than non ISA's. Without the old weekly rates projections tables again that Zopa stopped providing it not easy to see what the rates actually are and where they are headed on a week by week basis.
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ilmoro
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Post by ilmoro on Jul 21, 2021 15:24:10 GMT
aju Im a bit confused by what you are writing. Your ISA allowance for this year is £20,000 - have you subscribed any new money to your Zopa ISA this year? (This excludes any interest paid by Zopa this year which would relate to last years subscriptions) I dont understand, you cant have a this years allowance of £20400, so is that extra £400 previous money you have taken out? The Zopa statement is confusing in relation to this point. If the £400 is previous year funds and they are saying you can pay in £20400 to your ISA that would suggest their ISA is flexible in theory but not in practice as you cant deposit new funds onto the platform. However, if you have existing funds on the platform then there would appear to be nothing stopping you replacing up to £400 into your ISA. If you dont you will lose the tax status on that £400 in April 2022. "However, for current tax year Zopa ISAs, if you withdraw you will still be able to fund an ISA from a different provider without impacting your allowance. " This statement is dangerously ambiguous, if you withdraw current year funds you can only fund an ISA of a different type without impacting your allowance. You could only fund an IFISA with a different provider providing you were able to withdraw current year subscriptions in full and had received no income attributable to those funds. Any funds over & above subscriptions made have to be returned to the ISA they came from and as you can only have one ISA of each type per year that would prohibit opening another IFISA with another provider other than through transfer. Edit As an aside I dont think Zopa are able to ultimately prevent lenders from replacing funds into ISA that is/was flexible just because they arent accepting new funds. I suspect that would be regarded as treating customers unfairly by the regulators. Not even sure removing flexibility on an account that was advertised as flexible is acceptable unless lenders were able to transfer their ISA elsewhere in response, and given illiquidity of P2P that seems difficult to facilitate
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aju
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Post by aju on Jul 21, 2021 16:51:44 GMT
aju Im a bit confused by what you are writing. Your ISA allowance for this year is £20,000 - have you subscribed any new money to your Zopa ISA this year? (This excludes any interest paid by Zopa this year which would relate to last years subscriptions) I dont understand, you cant have a this years allowance of £20400, so is that extra £400 previous money you have taken out? The Zopa statement is confusing in relation to this point. If the £400 is previous year funds and they are saying you can pay in £20400 to your ISA that would suggest their ISA is flexible in theory but not in practice as you cant deposit new funds onto the platform. However, if you have existing funds on the platform then there would appear to be nothing stopping you replacing up to £400 into your ISA. If you dont you will lose the tax status on that £400 in April 2022. "However, for current tax year Zopa ISAs, if you withdraw you will still be able to fund an ISA from a different provider without impacting your allowance. " This statement is dangerously ambiguous, if you withdraw current year funds you can only fund an ISA of a different type without impacting your allowance. You could only fund an IFISA with a different provider providing you were able to withdraw current year subscriptions in full and had received no income attributable to those funds. Any funds over & above subscriptions made have to be returned to the ISA they came from and as you can only have one ISA of each type per year that would prohibit opening another IFISA with another provider other than through transfer. Edit As an aside I dont think Zopa are able to ultimately prevent lenders from replacing funds into ISA that is/was flexible just because they arent accepting new funds. I suspect that would be regarded as treating customers unfairly by the regulators. Not even sure removing flexibility on an account that was advertised as flexible is acceptable unless lenders were able to transfer their ISA elsewhere in response, and given illiquidity of P2P that seems difficult to facilitate It's a safe bet you are not as confused as I am but thanks for the input. I'm convinced Zopa is confused about many more things than just the ISA rules but that's another load of issues I've got them struggling over . Having been winding down since last March on all our Zopa accounts then you are right the £400 or so on top of the 20,000 ISA number is funds that have already been removed in this 2021/22 ISA period. (Since April 6th HMRC wise I assume). I do agree that i should be able to do this but i'm not overly concerned. So far we have not made an investment at all into this or last years ISA allocations and I don't intend to at present or the near future in Zopa I'm just dealing with removed funds since April that I have in the relevant holding accounts. I know I cannot move funds from non ISA holding to ISA without triggering the new period ISA - I assume that is the case as I am very confident that Zopa has not covered all the possibilities as you said. I hadn't thought of pushing it to the regs as an option either. I agree with what you are saying on the loss of tax status if i error but to be honest in our situation we are not really earning enough interest in my accounts to get past the £1000 barrier. Mrs Aju as I said elsewhere does not pay tax as yet and has enough of a gap to not be an issue and even donates some of her allowance to me too. In reality I just wanted to be sure i was not triggering this years ISA allocation to Zopa as we may have more funds later in the year that would be better placed. Our position for staying with Zopa is that all of the funds left constitutes no Capital and is all previously gained interest over a period. With that said i wanted to switch refund on rather than spend inordinate amount of time winding down with no place to fund wind down money anyway. Hopefully that brightens things. Mrs Aju is on my back to partake of her finely cooked evening meal!.
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aju
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Post by aju on Jul 28, 2021 14:01:38 GMT
So what gets even more confusing is that I wanted to turn on relending on both mine and Mrs AJU's ISA accounts as we have withdrawn enough now to be using non capital funds and it seemed a good idea rather than risking moving to another P2P that I would have to spend ages checking out etc. Over the past few days I've set our ISA up to start relending - the system changes from the old methods seem to have changed and seem more obscure but its a while since we were actively lending on Zopa so maybe i'm just relearning. So with the above achieved on both our accounts my next thing was that we both removed funds recently from our ISA accounts and i thought its a "flexible ISA" so i should be able to move funds back in (yeah right that'll work, not!) I read what i could find and thought well the Zopa ISA is clearly flexible Mrs Aju has removed £400 since April 6th and she does not pay tax anyway so how could we put that money back now that Zopa had stopped allowing new funding from banks. So be too clever by far I stupidly assumed there is £50 for this month sitting in Mrs Aju's "Std Invest" holding account so perhaps we can move that into the ISA and restore some removed funds. Now that was a BIG mistaken assumption and it seems that is strictly not allowed under the Zopa terms so she now has an ISA that she is not going to be funding beyond the released funds other than relending which is not part of that fund. She spent most of past two days talking to various agents (I was sitting beside her some of the time chipping in, two minds are better than 1, usually) To cut a very long 5 person discussion short it would in fact seem that you can move money in from an external bank as cash or cheque usually to replenish ISA removed funds in the same year but not from the Holding account of the the Invest account which in my view is sort of just like passing in from an external account. I've still to read all the transcripts as was considerable confusion across the 3/4 agents dealing with this over two days in all. conflicting notions were being expressed and I need to check the transcripts. Any way Mrs aju has a flexible IFISA for the current period that she will not be using other than relending funds from a previous ISA period. Any alternative views anyone.? ------------------------------------- Update: So i was asked by Zopa to check out the HMRC and the FCA and to be fair I thought it would not help much but then I found this doc again ISA Guidance. Notes for ISA Managers 31 January 2020and in particular this comment on Page 58. I needed to see if this was still on the HMRC pages for gov.uk and eventually found it on this page www.gov.uk/guidance/how-the-isa-scheme-works-for-isa-managers#isa-managers-guidanceIts quite a way down but it suggests to me that Zopa may be able to move funds from the STD account to the ISA without triggering a new ISA unless of course we go over our removed funds that is. We are waiting to see what they, Zopa, say to my response to them to check out HMRC.
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Post by fuzzyiceberg on Jul 29, 2021 13:03:56 GMT
If £400 has been withdrawn from a flexible ISA this tax year and no new money had previously been added to it this tax year (so no 21/22 subscription) then you can put £400 back in without it impacting this tax-years subscription. That's the legal position. This money could be from a non ISA account with Zopa or elsewhere. That said Zopa may have decided to effectively make its ISA non-flexible when it decided to ban new money - certainly the practical effect is essentially to make it non flexible since if they wont accept new funds you cannot replace the previously withdrawn funds. Moving funds from a non ISA account may be something they hadnt considered, but presumably is an edge case and anyway doesn't actually impact on their overall 'policy' objective of stopping new money into the Zopa p2p ecosystem since its already inside the system.
But good luchk finding a grown up in Zopa who understands this stuff.
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Greenwood2
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Post by Greenwood2 on Jul 29, 2021 13:04:24 GMT
So what gets even more confusing is that I wanted to turn on relending on both mine and Mrs AJU's ISA accounts as we have withdrawn enough now to be using non capital funds and it seemed a good idea rather than risking moving to another P2P that I would have to spend ages checking out etc. Over the past few days I've set our ISA up to start relending - the system changes from the old methods seem to have changed and seem more obscure but its a while since we were actively lending on Zopa so maybe i'm just relearning. So with the above achieved on both our accounts my next thing was that we both removed funds recently from our ISA accounts and i thought its a "flexible ISA" so i should be able to move funds back in (yeah right that'll work, not!) I read what i could find and thought well the Zopa ISA is clearly flexible Mrs Aju has removed £400 since April 6th and she does not pay tax anyway so how could we put that money back now that Zopa had stopped allowing new funding from banks. So be too clever by far I stupidly assumed there is £50 for this month sitting in Mrs Aju's "Std Invest" holding account so perhaps we can move that into the ISA and restore some removed funds. Now that was a BIG mistaken assumption and it seems that is strictly not allowed under the Zopa terms so she now has an ISA that she is not going to be funding beyond the released funds other than relending which is not part of that fund. She spent most of past two days talking to various agents (I was sitting beside her some of the time chipping in, two minds are better than 1, usually) To cut a very long 5 person discussion short it would in fact seem that you can move money in from an external bank as cash or cheque usually to replenish ISA removed funds in the same year but not from the Holding account of the the Invest account which in my view is sort of just like passing in from an external account. I've still to read all the transcripts as was considerable confusion across the 3/4 agents dealing with this over two days in all. conflicting notions were being expressed and I need to check the transcripts. Any way Mrs aju has a flexible IFISA for the current period that she will not be using other than relending funds from a previous ISA period. Any alternative views anyone.? ------------------------------------- Update: So i was asked by Zopa to check out the HMRC and the FCA and to be fair I thought it would not help much but then I found this doc again ISA Guidance. Notes for ISA Managers 31 January 2020and in particular this comment on Page 58. I needed to see if this was still on the HMRC pages for gov.uk and eventually found it on this page www.gov.uk/guidance/how-the-isa-scheme-works-for-isa-managers#isa-managers-guidanceIts quite a way down but it suggests to me that Zopa may be able to move funds from the STD account to the ISA without triggering a new ISA unless of course we go over our removed funds that is. We are waiting to see what they, Zopa, say to my response to them to check out HMRC. Someone was complaining about not being able to replenish their flexible Zopa IFISA, due to not being able to deposit funds further up the thread, found it bloom68.
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aju
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Post by aju on Jul 29, 2021 15:21:16 GMT
If £400 has been withdrawn from a flexible ISA this tax year and no new money had previously been added to it this tax year (so no 21/22 subscription) then you can put £400 back in without it impacting this tax-years subscription. That's the legal position. This money could be from a non ISA account with Zopa or elsewhere. That said Zopa may have decided to effectively make its ISA non-flexible when it decided to ban new money - certainly the practical effect is essentially to make it non flexible since if they wont accept new funds you cannot replace the previously withdrawn funds. Moving funds from a non ISA account may be something they hadnt considered, but presumably is an edge case and anyway doesn't actually impact on their overall 'policy' objective of stopping new money into the Zopa p2p ecosystem since its already inside the system.
But good luchk finding a grown up in Zopa who understands this stuff.
The grownups are few and far between in my view if at all but that will never stop me trying. I recently reported an issue with their on screen times detailing the last changes to statements data. I usually use it to compare the recent changes - there are a number of times in a day that these changes take place but most usually the ones i want to catch are around 11:00pm. sadly one of their servers is not set up with the correct time - last month i reported it was an hour out but on Monday this week it is 2 hours out - I know because i thought it was safe to record the changes in my spreads and fortunately noticed it was still changing despite it being 11:00pm and the Statements clock said 9pm - knowing that it was 1 hour out when i reported it I got caught out. So having reported the 1 hour out at the beginning of the month and being told it will be fixed in next two weeks I reported the 2hr slide. Apparently it will now take a further 2 weeks to fix it. Thats ok i know now how to avoid it most of the time but 6 weeks to update a server clock. Worst thing is I just re-reported on the same fault and the person who answered asked the exact same questions again without reading the thread and seeing this is not a new issue. Go figure eh. On the ISA front they have asked a number of question have pointed me at HMRC and now as result of what i found there they have a whole load of new questions. At first none of them could understand where i am coming from but i'm glad i did it with Mrs Aju as she does not pay tax at all anyway but I do so I won't be putting any "New" money from returned STD funds into Zopa ISA as I may become confident over the year to move funds elsewhere and wanted to leave my options open.
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aju
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Post by aju on Jul 29, 2021 15:27:59 GMT
//SNIPPED for clarity see previous items for full notes above ------------------------------------- Update: So i was asked by Zopa to check out the HMRC and the FCA and to be fair I thought it would not help much but then I found this doc again ISA Guidance. Notes for ISA Managers 31 January 2020and in particular this comment on Page 58. I needed to see if this was still on the HMRC pages for gov.uk and eventually found it on this page www.gov.uk/guidance/how-the-isa-scheme-works-for-isa-managers#isa-managers-guidanceIts quite a way down but it suggests to me that Zopa may be able to move funds from the STD account to the ISA without triggering a new ISA unless of course we go over our removed funds that is. We are waiting to see what they, Zopa, say to my response to them to check out HMRC. Someone was complaining about not being able to replenish their flexible Zopa IFISA, due to not being able to deposit funds further up the thread, found it bloom68 . Yeah i checked them out before i did anything but I thought i was being clever moving STD funds after it it was cash at that point but clearly i wasn't that clever. Mrs Aju now has an ISA for this period she will never actually put enough in to replenish the removed funds let alone the new ISA allowance as well. I guess its all a learning curve but its annoying when companies stray from what the HMRC define as the correct approach. Zopa are certainly within their rights to do what ever they want but to not document the fact. I reckon they will change the rules on their site soon. sadly i'm still going round in circles on the Statements and bonus-s definitions but i got the bone firmly in my mouth and i am not letting go yet!.
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Greenwood2
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Post by Greenwood2 on Jul 29, 2021 17:18:50 GMT
Someone was complaining about not being able to replenish their flexible Zopa IFISA, due to not being able to deposit funds further up the thread, found it bloom68 . Yeah i checked them out before i did anything but I thought i was being clever moving STD funds after it it was cash at that point but clearly i wasn't that clever. Mrs Aju now has an ISA for this period she will never actually put enough in to replenish the removed funds let alone the new ISA allowance as well. I guess its all a learning curve but its annoying when companies stray from what the HMRC define as the correct approach. Zopa are certainly within their rights to do what ever they want but to not document the fact. I reckon they will change the rules on their site soon. sadly i'm still going round in circles on the Statements and bonus-s definitions but i got the bone firmly in my mouth and i am not letting go yet!. Good luck with the tax statements, I think they've just stopped replying to me, and there are only so many ways I can keep trying to explain it's not right. But you probably have better contacts. I've been withdrawing funds in response which may or may not attract their attention, I doubt they care that much any more.
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