The Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, today (23 September 2022) announced a set of sweeping changes to SEIS and strongly hinted at pushing out the EIS sunset clause, which currently means the EIS scheme is withdrawn from 6 April 2025 if no action is taken.
The changes, which are copy and paste from the The Growth Plan, are as follows:
First, lets look at the changes regarding SEIS - very firm commitments have been announced:
From April 2023, companies will be able to raise up to £250,000 of SEIS investment, a two-thirds increase. To enable more companies to use SEIS, the gross asset limit will be increased to £350,000 and the age limit from 2 to 3 years. To support these increases, the annual investor limit will be doubled to £200,000. These changes will help over 2,000 companies a year that use the scheme to grow.
The news on EIS remains less firm, but seems positive and surely indicates that EIS won’t be allowed to lapse:
The government remains supportive of the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCT) and sees the value of extending them in the future.
A few obvious questions spring to mind as a result of these changes:
This article will be updated as more details on the changes are published.