Advice professionals are now getting into the crunch period in the run-up to tax year end, and that’s before any Budget curveballs that might come your way.

While we can’t promise a pain-free Budget on 6 March, there are ways Analyser can help lighten the load and speed up the research process that comes with this time of year.

Here are a few of the things you can do and compare in Analyser to support your clients’ tax year end preparations:

1) Assess stocks and shares ISAs and cash ISA rates

The easy route to carrying out tax year end research in Analyser is by running a platform features comparison.

To start, go to comparisons > platform > create a new feature comparison using the + sign. Give it a name then either choose your platform panel or select all if you want a view across the market.

For stocks and shares ISAs, click next then under group select wrappers, and under category hit ISA.

From here you can choose all the ISA types you’d like to compare, and then click see results.

And voila – you can see who does what on ISAs, alongside any additional information the platform has provided.

If it’s cash rates you’re interested in, we’ve prepared a ready made template you can use – in the initial select features section, choose cash analysis from the select templates dropdown menu.

As well as the cash rates themselves, you can use this template to see whether a platform charges to hold client cash, or a platform’s approach to taking a margin on interest.

All results can be downloaded as a CSV file. Comparisons can also be reused and copied for future exercises.

2) Bed and ISA functionality

You can use the same platform features comparison process outlined above if you’re looking to carry out Bed and ISA transactions for clients, and want to check which of your preferred platforms allows Auto Bed and ISA.

From the select features section, go to wrappers > ISAs > tick the auto Bed (GIA) to ISA box > see results.

Tax year end deadlines will vary from platform to platform, but there are some who allow the auto Bed and ISA process right up until 23:59 on 5 April.

If you’d like to check if prefunding is available, go to prefunding > switching > then click the transaction types you’re interested in. You can also check prefunding approaches more broadly by choosing payments and withdrawals instead of switching.

3) At a glance CGT data

Comparisons can also be used to see what CGT tools and support platforms are offering. This includes ‘basics’ like CGT calculators to whether you can initiate trades from a particular platform’s CGT tool.

This is all the more relevant given the changes to the capital gains tax-free allowance, which had gone from £12,300 to £6,000 for 2023/24, and is halving again to £3,000 for 2024/25.

To assess who does what on CGT, from the select features section, choose tools and reporting > portfolio management tools. This will give you a breakdown of CGT functionality across your chosen platforms.

4) Death benefit nominations

The announcement from the government that the lifetime allowance would be scrapped from 6 April 2024 has raised a lot of questions, not least the treatment of death benefits.

Last November HMRC published a policy statement confirming that death benefits will remain the same after 6 April 2024. These will be subject to income tax for the beneficiary if the member dies on or after their 75th birthday, and usually tax-free if they die before age 75.

But there are still implications to be aware of around how death benefits are set up.

Where used to provide a beneficiary’s income, withdrawals would be free of income tax. Yet if paid as a lump sum death benefit, the excess over the lump sum and death benefit allowance would be subject to income tax.

This all means it is important to make sure death benefit nominations are in place, so beneficiaries can choose to take death benefits as income if they wish.

You can use Analyser to check which platforms allow for on platform death benefit nomination. Again, following the feature comparison process, you can find this via pension and natural income > tools and reporting > on platform death benefits nomination section.

On platform death benefits nomination is also part of our pre-set approaching retirement template, which you can choose from the select templates dropdown menu.

Note: If you want to look up these data points (or any others) for individual platforms, you can do that via the directory. Click on the platform you’re interested in, then filter according to the group and category.

For example, to see who’s doing what on CGT, click directory> the platform you want to research > tools and reporting > portfolio management tools. All done in a few clicks.  

Some useful videos

Suitability spring cleaning with Analyser (Demo of TYE comparisons from 7:55)

How to use Analyser templates

Platform comparisons in less than 12 minutes