Tax, ISA and pension allowances to consider before 6 April

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We’re almost at the end of the 2025/26 tax year. We’re looking at a few different allowances you might still be able to use before they reset on 6 April.

1. ISA allowances

In the current tax year, you can pay in a maximum of £20,000 across your Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs). For example, you could put up to £20,000 into a Cash ISA or a Stocks & Shares ISA, or split it across both. In the 2025 Autumn Budget, the Chancellor confirmed the maximum amount that people under age 65 can save into a cash ISA is changing from April 2027. You can read our article for more information.

If you’ve got a Lifetime ISA (LISA), you can pay in up to £4,000 in the tax year. That counts towards your £20,000 allowance.

Money you take out of ISAs – including any interest or investment growth you might’ve achieved – isn’t subject to tax.

Got an ISA but not reached your allowance for the 2025/26 tax year? If you can afford to, you could consider paying in a bit more. Keep in mind some types of ISAs are investments. Their value can go down as well as up and could be worth less than was paid in.

If you’re a parent or guardian of a child, you might have set up a Junior ISA (JISA) for them. In the 2025/26 tax year, you can pay up to £9,000 into a child’s JISA or split that across a cash JISA and a Stocks & Shares JISA. This doesn’t count towards your £20,000 ISA allowance.

2. Capital gains tax allowance

Capital gains tax (CGT) is the tax you pay on the profit when you ‘dispose’ of something that’s gone up in value. Disposing can mean selling, gifting, and more.

CGT can apply to profits on different things, including (but not limited to) personal possessions, some types of shares, crypto assets, and second homes.

You get a capital gains tax-free allowance – an amount of profit you can earn in a tax year without needing to pay CGT on it. The allowance is currently £3,000 for individuals, or £1,500 for trusts.

Keep this in mind if you have something you want to ‘dispose’ of before the end of the tax year.

Learn more on GOV.UK.

3. Dividends allowance

​​​​​​When a company makes a profit and gives shareholders some money back, this is money is known as ‘dividends’.

You don’t usually pay tax on dividends that fall within your personal allowance, which is £12,570 for most people. So if your total income, including dividends, in a tax year is below your personal allowance, you normally won’t need to pay tax on the dividends.

There’s also a ‘dividend allowance’, which is £500 for the 2025/26 tax year. So even if your income is above your personal allowance, you can still earn £500 in dividends tax free. Learn more on GOV.UK.

From April 2027, the rate of tax on dividends will increase by 2% for some people. Read more in our article.

4. Gift exemption

Inheritance tax (IHT) may need to be paid if the value of your ‘estate’ is above a threshold of £325,000 when you die, though your threshold could be higher in some cases. IHT thresholds are frozen until April 2031.

If you leave your estate to your spouse or civil partner, it’s generally free from IHT.

Your estate includes things like property, possessions, some types of savings, and more. From April 2027, the government intends to include unused pension savings when calculating the value of estates, so pension savings could be subject to IHT in future. The full details of how this will work are still to be confirmed.

You might be able to lower the value of your estate – and potentially the resulting IHT bill – by ‘gifting’ while you’re alive.

There’s a gifting annual exemption of £3,000. You can gift up to £3,000 worth of cash or assets in the current tax year and not have that added to the value of your estate. If you didn’t use the exemption in the previous tax year, you can also carry that forward to this year. 

There are other kinds of gifts that are exempt from IHT that could help lower your estate’s value. There are lots of rules around IHT and gifting – MoneyHelper is a good place to find out more.

5. Pension allowances

If you’re under 75, you can get tax benefits when you pay into a pension plan. But be aware of the pension annual allowance. This is the total that can be paid in across your pension plans in a tax year before you could face a tax charge.

The annual allowance is currently £60,000. That includes payments by you, your employer, and any third parties, plus any tax relief that’s been added to your plans.

You can personally pay in up to 100% of your earnings (capped at £60,000) and still get tax relief. But be careful that the total amount paid in doesn’t exceed £60,000.

Some people trigger something called the money purchase annual allowance (MPAA), which means their allowance is £10,000 instead.  You can trigger this by taking more than just a tax-free lump sum from a pension plan (though there are some exceptions).

If you earn more than £200,000, you might be impacted by the tapered annual allowance. This means your allowance could be somewhere between £60,000 and £10,000.

Using your pension allowance

You can ask your provider if you have any pension allowance left to use. If you’re a Standard Life customer, you can contact us online – learn about our online services on our website. Or visit our support page for FAQs and other ways to get in touch.

Used your annual allowance for the current tax year? You may be able to carry forward unused allowances from the last three tax years. Find out who can and can’t do this.

If you still have allowance available, you could consider making a one-off payment into your plan or increasing your monthly payments. You may be able to do this online or on your provider’s app. Or if your employer set up your plan, ask them how it works for you.

A pension is an investment. Its value can go down as well as up and could be worth less than was paid in.

The deadline for processing payments may vary depending on your plan and payment method, so it could be worth checking with your provider.

 

The information here is based on our understanding in January 2026 and shouldn’t be taken as financial advice.

Your own personal circumstances, including where you live in the UK will have an impact on the tax you pay. Laws and tax rules may change in the future.