Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme

The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) provides massive tax reliefs to individual investors who purchase new shares in very early-stage companies. Introduced in April 2012, SEIS is one of the most generous tax schemes available to UK taxpayers, and no other major country offers such significant reliefs to investors in startups.

If you realised capital gains during the 2012-13 tax year, SEIS and related reliefs allow you claim up to:

78%

of your investment back if the startup succeeds - and you pay no CGT when you sell your shares

100.5%

of your investment back if the startup fails - allowing you to invest in startups with the potential of full downside protection

This means that the returns on your successful investments can be magnified by over 4x, while you lose nothing on unsuccessful investments (in either case you need to have sufficient tax liabilities to set your investments off against).

If you didn't realise gains last year and make an investment during the 2013-14 tax year, SEIS and related reliefs allow you claim up to:

64%

of your investment back if the startup succeeds - and you pay no CGT when you sell your shares

86.5%

of your investment back if the startup fails - allowing you to invest in startups with the potential of full downside protection

To learn more about how SEIS works, please read the HMRC guidance or view the video below.

Seedrs and SEIS

Seedrs has a large selection of SEIS-eligible startups looking for investment. We make it simple and straightforward to invest in SEIS-eligible companies, and when you make an investment, we take care of all the paperwork to ensure you are able to claim your full reliefs.

For more information on the mechanics of how we handle investments under SEIS (and those under its sister scheme for later-stage companies, EIS), please read our short blog post.

SEIS for You

If you're looking for alternatives to savings, ISAs and stocks - investing in a portfolio of startups can be a more lucrative and enjoyable asset class. When you factor in the reliefs available from investing in SEIS companies, it becomes dramatically more appealing.

Learn more at the new investor section of SEIS Window.
Check out some of our recently funded startups, many of whom are SEIS-eligible.

Investing in startups involves risks, including loss of capital, illiquidity, lack of dividends and dilution, and it should be done only as part of a diversified portfolio. Seedrs is targeted solely at investors who are sufficiently sophisticated to understand these risks and make their own investment decisions.

This page has been approved as a financial promotion of the Seedrs platform by Seedrs Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. It is not intended to be a promotion of any individual investment opportunity, and the summary information provided about investment opportunities is intended solely to demonstrate the types of investments available through Seedrs. Any investment decision should be made solely on the basis of the full listing for that particular investment opportunity. Full listings are available to authorised investors only.