By entering an ISA with a child selected as the owner, parents are allowed to contribute up to the maximum allowable for the child up to age 18, without affecting contributions to their own personal ISAs.
To enter a Junior ISA:
Click on the + button
1. Go to the Savings & Investments screen.
2. Select the investment Type “Stocks & Shares ISA” and enter the name of the account
1. Type & Account Name: Select Stock Market ISA/Junior ISA and enter the name of the account.
2. Balance: If the account has an existing balance (as at start-of-plan), then input this here. Note that Purchase Value identifies the cost basis of the existing balance - from a tax perspective, this is immaterial for ISAs, of course.
NB: Regarding contributions, the ISA allowance is assumed (by default) to increase at a rate that is determined by your Default Tax Table Assumptions.
Further to this, the software enforces annual ISA contribution limits (per individual) within a plan. As such, the ISA contribution that actually gets made will always be the lesser of the contribution amount entered, or the (re-valued) ISA allowance.
3. Contribution Type
To make a regular contribution, there is a choice as to whether to enter a monetary £ figure or a % figure and a monetary £ figure with inflation which will see the monetary figure increase each year with inflation. The % option relates to employment earnings (including or excluding bonuses). The Maximum Allowed Contribution refers to the ISA Allowance minus any contributions already made in that year.
Please also keep in mind that contributions will only be made if funds remain available after expenses have been met.
Contributions will be limited to the annual allowance for Junior ISAs (£9,000 for the 2022/23 tax year) until the child turns 18. The software may be set to assume that this allowance inflates annual. For more information on where this assumption is managed, see our article on the "Default Tax Table Assumption".
4. Timing: Go to the Timing menu located on the left hand side of the screen (see screenshot above). Selections on this panel are used to set the time span over which contributions (to the ISA) are to be made - in this instance, between the Start event and Poppy's age 21 event (see screenshot below)
Note: If you don't have events on the timeline already that are positioned appropriately to be used as start or end events, new ones can be easily added by clicking on one of the grey lines and setting the marker as the Start/End event.
5. People: The owner/s are identified with a colour (see Dashboard) ensure that the correct owner is shown on this investment. . Ownership will default to the primary client, so one would deselect Jeff and select the child.
Only one child can be selected as the owner of a Junior ISA. If parents are contributing to Junior ISAs for multiple children, a Junior ISA would need to be entered separately for each child and the contributions scheduled for each of these ISAs.
To check that the correct contributions are being made you can look on Year View > Expenses. This will show you the regular contributions being made and the source of the payment.