ISA rules
ISAs over 65: keeping the full £20,000 cash limit from April 2027
Enter your date of birth. The tool tells you your age on 5 April 2028, your cash ISA ceiling in 2027/28, and the first tax year in which you have the full £20,000 for cash.
Do you keep the £20,000 cash limit in 2027/28?
Cash limit in 2027/28
£12,000
| Age on 5 April 2028 | 64 |
| First tax year at £20,000 in cash | 2028/29 |
| Transfers from investment ISAs into cash | not allowed |
The test is your age on the last day of the tax year, 5 April, not on the day you pay in.
Savers aged 65 or over are left out of the main change to cash ISAs. From 6 April 2027, SI 2026/1018 limits cash ISA subscriptions to £12,000 a year only for people who are 64 or under at the end of the tax year. If you are 65 or older on 5 April, which closes the tax year, your cash ceiling for that whole year is £20,000, the same as the overall ISA allowance. In 2027/28 the test date is 5 April 2028, so anyone born on or before 5 April 1963 keeps the full cash limit, while a person born on 6 April 1963 is 64 that day and has the lower ceiling until 2028/29. The same age test decides whether money can be transferred from a stocks and shares or innovative finance ISA into a cash ISA: allowed at 65 or over, barred below. The flat 22 % charge on interest earned by cash inside investment ISAs applies at every age.
Sums checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How the sums are done
Why 5 April decides everything
The wording in SI 2026/1018 is that the lower ceiling applies to an individual who is 64 or under at the end of the year. A tax year ends on 5 April, so your age on that date governs every subscription made between the previous 6 April and then. This gives an advantage to people whose birthday falls early in the calendar year: they are treated as 65 for months before they actually reach it.
| Date of birth | Age on 5 April 2028 | Cash limit 2027/28 | First year at £20,000 | Transfer into cash in 2027/28 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 March 1960 | 68 | £20,000 | 2027/28 | allowed |
| 5 April 1963 | 65 | £20,000 | 2027/28 | allowed |
| 6 April 1963 | 64 | £12,000 | 2028/29 | not allowed |
| 31 December 1963 | 64 | £12,000 | 2028/29 | not allowed |
| 10 January 1964 | 64 | £12,000 | 2028/29 | not allowed |
| 20 August 1964 | 63 | £12,000 | 2029/30 | not allowed |
| 2 February 1966 | 62 | £12,000 | 2030/31 | not allowed |
The pairs of rows either side of 5 April show the edge of the rule. Born on 5 April 1963, you reach 65 on the very last day of 2027/28 and keep £20,000. Born a day later, you are 64 on 5 April 2028 and have £12,000 for that year, then £20,000 from 2028/29. Someone born on 10 January 1964 is also capped in 2027/28 but returns to the full figure a year later, while a birthday of 20 August 1964 means two capped years.
What stays the same for older savers
For a saver who is 65 or over at the end of the year, cash ISAs work in 2027/28 much as they do in 2026/27: £20,000 can be paid in, in cash or any mix of ISA types, and money can be moved between any kinds of ISA. The HMRC newsletter of June 2026 and the explanatory memorandum present this as a deliberate choice to let people near retirement hold less risk. Cash already in ISAs, at any age, stays tax free.
Two parts of the reform do reach savers over 65. The flat 22 % charge on interest from cash held inside stocks and shares or innovative finance ISAs applies regardless of age. And the higher savings rates of 22 %, 42 % and 47 % apply to interest on savings held outside ISAs. For many pensioners that interest is covered anyway by the starting rate for savings and the Personal Savings Allowance; the page on pensioners and savings tax shows when it is not.
Couples with different ages
ISAs are individual. In a couple where one partner is 66 and the other 62 in 2027/28, the older one can put £20,000 into cash ISAs and the younger one £12,000, giving the household £32,000 of fresh cash ISA room that year. Neither can use the other's allowance while both are alive. When one partner dies, the survivor gains an extra allowance equal to the value of the deceased's ISAs, described on the page on inherited ISAs.
How many ISA holders are older
The annual savings statistics of September 2026 count about 23 million people holding ISAs and 16.8 million adult accounts subscribed in 2024/25, of which 64 % were cash ISAs. For anyone who reaches 65 in the next few years, the cash ISA limit page gives the ceiling year by year from a year of birth.