EIS: Enterprise Investment Scheme

There probably isn’t a small business owner in the country who hasn’t contemplated raising external investment at one point or another.
The problem for small business owners is that banks often require small business loans to be personally secured. And for many entrepreneurs that feels too much like having all your eggs in one basket.

One neat solution to the problem is raising equity through the government’s highly tax efficient enterprise investment scheme (EIS).
The fantastic thing about this scheme for investors is that it offers immediate tax relief on the value of the investment (which they can knock of that year’s tax bill). And if the investment fails, they can effectively recoup income tax on most of the value of the loss.

This has the effect of offering investors a discount on the initial investment and downside protection if it goes wrong. So investors tend to be less concerned than they would normally be about the commercial merits of the investment given that for every £100 invested only about half of that is actually at stake (for top rate tax payers at least).

There are certain conditions that need to be met, but in our experience most small businesses qualify and the approval process is actually relatively straight forward.

We offer fixed price EIS packages that aim to make the scheme available to all small businesses. If you would like to find out more, please get in touch.