SEIS relief

SEIS relief

The seed enterprise investment scheme (SEIS), like the enterprise investment scheme (EIS), is designed to encourage investment in smaller, higher-risk trading, unquoted companies by offering a range of tax reliefs to individual investors purchasing newly issued shares in those companies.

SEIS tax reliefs

In summary, there are three principal SEIS reliefs available to qualifying individual investors, one concerning income tax and two concerning capital gains tax (CGT):

•
income tax relief at 50% of the amount invested, up to an annual investment limit of £200,000 (subject to clawback if the shares are disposed of within three years)
•
CGT exemption (disposal relief) on any capital gain realised on a disposal of shares that qualified for SEIS income tax relief and were held for three years, and
•
CGT re-investment relief providing a CGT exemption for 50% of any gains realised on the disposal of assets in a tax year and re-invested in the same tax year in shares qualifying for SEIS income tax relief up to a maximum exemption of £100,000.

Additionally, there are two other tax reliefs, which are not SEIS-specific, but generally apply to

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