Consultation outcome

Tax-advantaged venture capital schemes: draft legislation and explanatory notes

This consultation has concluded

Read the full outcome

The Equity Gap and Knowledge-based Firms: Executive Summary

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Detail of outcome

In July 2014, the government launched a consultation on the tax-advantaged venture capital schemes. Following this, the government announced at the Summer Budget 2015 that it would introduce a series of changes to place a greater emphasis on supporting innovative firms, whilst continuing to provide targeted support for growing firms, in line with new State aid rules.

This document summarises the main issues raised by respondents under the consultation questions and outlines the government’s response to these. It reiterates the government’s commitment to ensuring that the schemes continue to provide appropriate support for small and growing businesses across the UK, and provides further details on the changes announced at the Summer Budget 2015. The government is grateful to those who participated in this consultation.


Original consultation

Summary

Seeking views on draft legislation and explanatory notes amending the rules for the tax-advantaged venture capital schemes announced at Budget 2015.

This consultation ran from
to

Consultation description

At Budget 2015 we announced a package of changes to the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCT):

  • a new 12-year age limit on companies qualifying for EIS/VCT investment
  • a new cap on total EIS/VCT investment that an individual company can receive of £15 million for most companies, and £20 million for ‘knowledge-intensive’ companies
  • an increased employee limit of 499 for knowledge-intensive companies
  • removal of the barriers between Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme and EIS/VCT funding

Some of these changes are subject to State aid approval and therefore legislation has not been published in the Finance Bill 2015.

This document sets out the detailed legislation that will be brought forward in a future Finance Bill. A tax information and impact note on the changes is published alongside this consultation.

Documents

Tax-advantaged venture capital schemes: draft legislation and explanatory notes

Updates to this page

Published 24 March 2015
Last updated 8 July 2015 + show all updates
  1. Updated to include consultation outcome and executive summary of research at Summer Budget 2015

  2. First published.

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