Now the government wants to mess with your Isa

Individual savings accounts work well, and are used and understood by millions. So why on earth would the government want to mess with them?

Only last week I wrote a post explaining why I think money saved into ISAs is safer from the government than money saved into pensions.It sounds perfectly sensible, but all it actually does is prove how even someone as consistently cynical as I am can underestimate the idiocy of governments.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the Treasury has been doing a few of the things I anticipated last week. It has for example been "gauging opinion" on slashing the amount of tax free cash people can take from their pensions. But it has also been discussing dealing with what the paper calls the "concerns" about ISA millionaires, with a cap on the total amount one can save into an ISA of £100,000.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Explore More
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.