Secure tax relief for your early stage investors with Carta Advance Assurance – a tailored SEIS & EIS application service from the platform trusted by 40,000+ founders, investors and law firms.
Our team of experts will guide you every step of the way from application to advance assurance approval.
We work closely with HMRC every day so we can make sure everything runs smoothly with your application.
We partner with over 40,000 companies to help build the brands of tomorrow, ensuring you’re in hands you can trust.
SEIS incentivises investment in early-stage startups by allowing companies to raise up to £250k while offering tax relief for investors. This includes income tax relief of up to 50% of the investment amount and exemption from capital gains tax on profits.
EIS has a higher cap with companies able to raise up to £5 million per tax year and £12 million during the lifetime of a company. Income tax relief is for investors at a lower rate of up to 30% of the investment amount and, similar to SEIS, profits are exempt from capital gains tax.
First, we have an initial call to discuss what you’re looking for and how we might be able to assist you. No commitment, no pressure.
We’ll work closely with your team to build up all the information and documentation we need to ensure your application is successful.
Next, we’ll pull everything together & open your advance assurance application with HMRC on your behalf.
Finally, we’ll submit the application on your behalf and wait for approval. We’ll even handle any further discussions with HMRC.
We are always keen to hear from new companies and we’d love to learn about your business.
Let us know your details and you can either book a 30 minute call with one of our team or we’ll reach out to you via email to discuss your needs.
SEIS is specifically tailored for startups and early-stage businesses, while EIS is applicable to larger companies, representing a key distinction between the two schemes. This is shown the amount companies are able to raise under each scheme and the tax benefits available. See details above.
If a company intends to raise funds through both SEIS and EIS, it must first secure investment using SEIS, provided that all necessary criteria are met. This is because once shares are issued under EIS, it becomes impossible to retroactively issue shares under SEIS. So if you’re intending to do both, you should always start with SEIS.
HMRC has ceased offering advance assurance for speculative applications, leaving certain startups in a challenging position where attracting investment becomes difficult without the advance assurance already in place.
Nonetheless, HMRC’s requirement does not mandate formalised offers of investment. Instead, having potential investors onboard who are inclined to invest if advance assurance is granted suffices.
Familiarising yourself with the eligibility criteria for government-backed investment schemes like SEIS and EIS is essential. From company qualifications to investor requirements, understanding these criteria can greatly impact your fundraising efforts and help you make informed decisions to fuel your growth ambitions.
Advance assurance is confirmation from HMRC that the proposed share issuance and investment structure of a business meet the eligibility criteria for either the SEIS or EIS investment schemes. Essentially, it provides assurance to potential investors that their investments in the company will qualify for the tax benefits associated with SEIS or EIS, thus potentially making the investment more attractive.
Carta supports companies at every stage with a range of tools and services, from cap table management to valuations. Let us lay the groundwork so you can focus on building the future.
When potential investors requested copies of the cap table, we had to create them in Excel. There was a risk it was wrong and contained mistakes. We started looking around for an alternative and Carta was quickly recommended by our legal advisors.
I’ve seen companies that don’t have clean cap tables: they spend hours trying to recreate what happened in the past. However, it’ll save them a tonne of money and time, in the long run, to switch to Carta.
We used to have hard copies of everything, but now we issue and keep track of all phantom shares on Carta. It’s saved our HR team a tremendous amount of time.
