FA 2012 analysis: Venture capital reliefs

The new SEIS relief

SEIS is a new tax-advantaged venture capital scheme that offers investors enhanced income tax and CGT reliefs. The policy objective of introducing SEIS is to support the government’s growth agenda by ‘helping smaller riskier early stage UK companies which may face barriers in raising external finance to attract investment’. The original idea in July 2011 had been for a much broader business angel seed investment scheme but SEIS is a much watered-down version and operates in a similar fashion to EIS albeit with more favourable reliefs.

Enhanced tax reliefs: Tax reliefs are available to individual investors who subscribe for shares in SEIS qualifying companies on or after 6 April 2012.