HI,
my employer has a great SAYE scheme, but its back by Equiniti who are fairly useless. Shares are issued in paper certs, and theres a lengthy process to transfer shares from a EQ shareview dealing account into a EQI S&S ISA; that comes with some transfer fees too.
Ideal solution, would be to transfer paper share holdings directly into T212 S&S ISA, but that’s not currently possible, or so i believe. Any clue on whether this is likely to be possible in the future, and any likely timelines.
(currently sitting on about £45k worth of SAYE schemes due to mature in the next few years, and the thought of having to fight with EQI every step of the way makes me weep ;))
Transferring shares to an ISA from a SAYE plan where shares can be held or sold without CGT being applicable. The ISA allowance for 2023/24 is £20,000. Special rules apply to SAYE plans that mean that the transfer doesn’t count towards CGT, if shares are transferred within 90 days of exercising the option. Shares are valued using their market value at transfer and this counts towards the annual ISA allowance. Where the 90-day period straddles the end of a tax year, two years’ ISA allowance would be available.
Transferring shares to a ‘flexible ISA’ from a SAYE plan has similar features with additional freedom to take out cash and replace it in the same tax year without affecting the current year’s allowance. In practice this means participants can put shares into a flexible ISA, sell them, remove the cash, and then replace them with any remaining SAYE shares. This process can happen numerous times within the permitted 90-day period.