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Your own ISAs, this tax year

New money paid in this tax year. Money already sitting in an ISA from an earlier year does not count, and neither does a transfer in from another ISA.

What you have subscribed, not what the investments are now worth. Growth inside the account never uses allowance.

Peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding debentures. Leave at £0 if it does not apply — it is here because gov.uk lists it as one of the four types your allowance splits across.

Capped at £4,000 a year, and it counts towards the same £20,000. The government bonus does not.

A child’s ISA, and the tax year

A separate £9,000 limit belonging to the child, not to you. Paying into it does not use any of your own allowance.

How many payments you want to divide the remaining allowance into. One payment means paying the whole remainder at once.

An ISA allowance is per tax year and does not carry forward. Each year starts on 6 April with a fresh one.

This works out allowance, not tax. Nothing inside an ISA is taxed, so there is no income tax, dividend tax or capital gains tax to show here. What a stocks and shares ISA is worth in tax terms is the stocks and shares ISA calculator, which projects a pot forward and prices the tax you would have paid outside one.

Nothing you type is transmitted or stored: this page is a static file and the arithmetic runs in this tab. A share link is the exception — it carries your figures in the URL. What that means.

Your £20,000 allowance, account by account

Of the £20,000 you can put into ISAs in 2026/27, this much is still available

£11,000.00

£9,000.00 of £20,000 used.

Spread over 12 payments that is £916.66 each, rounded down so the payments cannot add up to more than the allowance.

Where your own allowance has gone

Subscriptions to each adult ISA type, against the overall 2026/27 limit
ISA typePaid in this tax year
Cash ISA£0.00
Stocks and shares ISA£5,000.00
Innovative finance ISA£0.00
Lifetime ISA£4,000.00
Total subscribed£9,000.00
Overall limit for 2026/27£20,000.00
Left to use£11,000.00

One limit across all four, in any mix you like. gov.uk: “Every tax year you can save up to £20,000 in one account or split the allowance across multiple accounts.” The split does not have to be even and no type has a minimum.

The Lifetime ISA sits inside that £20,000

Lifetime ISA subscription, bonus and limit
Paid into a Lifetime ISA£4,000.00
Annual Lifetime ISA limit£4,000.00
Government bonus at 25.00%, capped at £1,000£1,000.00
In the account after the bonus£5,000.00

The £4,000 you pay in counts against your overall allowance; the 25.00% bonus does not. So a full Lifetime ISA subscription leaves £16,000.00 for every other kind of ISA, and the account still ends the year holding £5,000. Use the Lifetime ISA calculator for the bonus, eligibility and withdrawal question on a particular contribution.

Only one Lifetime ISA can be paid into in a tax year. That is the exception to the rule below — gov.uk: “You can only pay into one Lifetime ISA in a tax year.”

A Junior ISA is a separate allowance, and it is the child’s

Junior ISA subscription against its own limit
Paid into a Junior ISA£0.00
Junior ISA limit for 2026/27£9,000.00
Left to use£9,000.00

It does not touch the £20,000 above, because the account holder is the child rather than you. gov.uk: “Parents or guardians with parental responsibility can open a Junior ISA and manage the account, but the money belongs to the child.” The child takes control of the account at 16 and can take the money out at 18 — and at 18 it becomes theirs to spend on anything at all, which is the part worth knowing before the first payment rather than after the eighteenth birthday. The Junior ISA calculator projects the child’s pot to that handover and keeps both ages visible beside it.

How many ISAs of the same type you can pay into

More than one, since 6 April 2024, except the Lifetime ISA. This rule changed, so it is quoted rather than remembered. gov.uk’s own worked example: “You could save £10,000 in one cash ISA, £3,000 in another cash ISA and £7,000 in a stocks and shares ISA in one tax year.” The single limit that binds is the £20,000 across all of them — and the Lifetime ISA keeps its own restriction, one account per tax year.

Read it at gov.uk — How ISAs work. If that page and this one disagree, gov.uk is right and the corrections log is where to say so.

Three things this page does not know

  • What you have already paid in. The figures above are the ones you typed. Nothing here reads an account, so a subscription you have forgotten is a subscription this page has forgotten too.
  • Whether a payment is a subscription at all. A transfer between ISAs and money you replace in a flexible ISA within the same tax year do not use allowance. Money you take out of a non-flexible ISA and pay back in does. Your provider knows which yours is; this page cannot.
  • Anything about tax. No income tax, dividend tax or capital gains tax is calculated here, because none is due inside an ISA. The value of that shelter is what the stocks and shares ISA calculator puts a number on.

Worked example: a full Lifetime ISA and what it leaves

Maya is saving for a first home in 2026/27. She has paid £4,000 into a Lifetime ISA — the most it can take — and £6,000 into a cash ISA. She has also put £1,000 into her son’s Junior ISA.

  1. Her own subscriptions are £4,000 plus £6,000, which is £10,000.00 against the £20,000 overall limit. The Lifetime ISA counts towards that limit; it does not sit beside it.
  2. So £10,000.00 is left, and she can put it into any mix of cash, stocks and shares or innovative finance ISAs she likes. Divided over 6 payments that is £1,666.66 each.
  3. The government adds 25.00% to the Lifetime ISA subscription: £1,000.00, which is the maximum of £1,000 a year. The bonus is not a subscription, so it uses none of the £20,000 — the account ends the year holding £5,000.00 on a £4,000 limit.
  4. The £1,000 in her son’s Junior ISA is charged against his £9,000 limit, leaving £8,000.00 there. It has no effect on Maya’s own allowance at all.
Maya’s 2026/27 ISA allowance, account by account
AccountPaid inCounts towards
Lifetime ISA£4,000.00Maya’s £20,000
Cash ISA£6,000.00Maya’s £20,000
Government bonus£1,000.00Nothing — it is not a subscription
Junior ISA£1,000.00Her son’s £9,000
Maya’s allowance still available£10,000.00

Methodology: which limit sits inside which

The arithmetic, in full

  1. Add up everything subscribed to a cash ISA, a stocks and shares ISA, an innovative finance ISA and a Lifetime ISA. That total is measured against one limit — £20,000 for 2026/27 — and what is left is the subtraction.
  2. The Lifetime ISA is checked separately against its own £4,000 limit, because it has two limits stacked on it: its own, and its share of the overall one.
  3. The bonus is 25.00% of the part of the Lifetime ISA subscription inside that limit, capped at £1,000 a year. The cap and the rate are both published by HMRC and they reconcile: 25.00% of £4,000 is exactly £1,000.
  4. The Junior ISA is measured against a different limit entirely — £9,000 — because the account holder is the child. It never enters the adult subtraction.

Limits for 2026/27

LimitAmountCounts towards the overall limit?
Overall ISA subscription limit£20,000.00It is the overall limit
Lifetime ISA£4,000.00Yes
Lifetime ISA government bonus25.00%, up to £1,000.00No — a bonus is not a subscription
Junior ISA£9,000.00No — it is the child’s allowance

Sources

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

What has been verified, and what has not

The ISA limits, the Lifetime ISA bonus rate and the Junior ISA limit used here were checked against gov.uk on 12 August 2026, figure by figure. That check covers the published limits only. It does not verify any result this page produces, and no named person has signed the check off yet. Treat the output as a subtraction you can check — every figure it is made of is on the page for that reason — not as advice, and not as confirmation that a subscription is within the rules.

What this calculator does not do

  • It does not read your accounts. Every figure is one you typed. A subscription you have forgotten is a subscription this page never sees, and that is the most likely reason a reader here and HMRC disagree.
  • Flexible ISAs and transfers. Money replaced in a flexible ISA in the same tax year, and a transfer from one ISA to another, do not use allowance — but whether your account is flexible is a fact about your provider that nothing here can determine. Money withdrawn from a non-flexible ISA and paid back in does use allowance again.
  • Eligibility. Residence, age limits, the Lifetime ISA rules on opening before 40 and paying in until 50, and the withdrawal charge for taking money out of a Lifetime ISA other than for a first home or after 60, are all outside this arithmetic.
  • Tax of any kind. Nothing inside an ISA is taxed, so there is nothing to compute. What that shelter is worth in pounds is the stocks and shares ISA calculator.
  • Growth. This page does not project a balance forward and makes no assumption about returns. For that, use the investment calculator.

Nothing you type is transmitted or stored — there is no application server and no database. A share link is the exception: it carries your figures in the URL. What that means.

ISA allowance questions

How much can I put into an ISA this year?

£20,000 in 2026/27, across every ISA you subscribe to. gov.uk puts it as "Every tax year you can save up to £20,000 in one account or split the allowance across multiple accounts." There is no minimum for any type and the split does not have to be even, so £20,000 in one stocks and shares ISA and £20,000 spread over four accounts are both within the rules.

Does the Lifetime ISA come out of my £20,000 or on top of it?

Out of it. The £4,000 Lifetime ISA limit counts towards the overall £20,000, so a full Lifetime ISA subscription leaves £16,000 for every other kind of ISA. The government bonus is different: it is added by HMRC rather than subscribed by you, so it uses no allowance and the account can end the year holding £5,000.

How much is the Lifetime ISA bonus?

25.00% of what you pay in, up to £1,000 a year. The two figures are the same statement twice over: 25.00% of the £4,000 annual limit is exactly £1,000, which is why paying in more than the limit earns nothing extra.

Can I pay into two cash ISAs in the same tax year?

Yes, since 6 April 2024, and this is a rule that changed — so it is worth checking rather than remembering. gov.uk’s own example is "You could save £10,000 in one cash ISA, £3,000 in another cash ISA and £7,000 in a stocks and shares ISA in one tax year." The Lifetime ISA is the exception: you can only pay into one of those in a tax year. The overall limit binds either way.

Does a Junior ISA use up my own ISA allowance?

No. A Junior ISA has its own £9,000 limit for 2026/27 and it belongs to the child, not to whoever pays in. gov.uk: "Parents or guardians with parental responsibility can open a Junior ISA and manage the account, but the money belongs to the child." The child takes control at 16 and can withdraw at 18 — and at 18 it is theirs to use for anything.

What happens if I pay in more than the allowance?

Tell your provider rather than waiting. HMRC identifies over-subscriptions after the tax year ends and removes the excess along with the tax relief on it, so the money spends months looking sheltered when it is not. This page reports the excess rather than quietly capping the figure, because a tidy answer would hide the thing you need to act on.

Does an unused ISA allowance carry forward to next year?

No. The allowance is per tax year, it resets on 6 April, and anything unused at the end of the year is gone. That is the whole reason this page exists as a subtraction rather than as a projection: what is left has a deadline on it.

Do I pay tax on money in an ISA?

No income tax on interest, no dividend tax on dividends, and no capital gains tax on gains, however large the account grows and whether or not you ever tell HMRC about it. That is the entire product. What the shelter is worth in pounds depends on what you would otherwise have paid, which is what the stocks and shares ISA calculator on this site works out.

Does the value of my investments count towards the allowance?

No — only new money you pay in. Growth inside a stocks and shares ISA never uses allowance, and neither does a transfer in from another ISA. An account worth £80,000 can still take a full subscription this year.