Policy and Regulatory Updates

BBAA is pleased to announce a new OECD Report on Angel Financing.

File Attachments: 

oecd_angel_financing_publication.pdf

Chancellor George Osborne’s Autumn statement today announced a major new tax relief of 50% for investing in seed stage businesses called SEIS. The Chancellor announced:

The introduction of the new Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), commencing from April 2012, to encourage investment into new early stage companies.  This is the ‘BASIS’ proposal that was set out in the consultation we carried out earlier this year.  The details of the scheme are as follows:

As part of BBAA’s ongoing service we would like to clarify a number of issues regarding European investment. It is especially important to investors to know the details on eligibility for EIS tax relief with regard to cross-border investment. Changes were legislated in the Finance Act (No 3) 2010 and applied from 6^th April 2011.

At Budget 2011 the Government announced it would consult on further support for seed investment and start-ups, simplification of the EIS/VCT schemes and ensuring they are targeted on genuine risk capital investments.

This consultation is now live and can be found at the following link:http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/consult_tax_advantaged_venture_capital_schemes.htm

We are delighted that the lobbying that BBAA has made to Government of late on the need to encourage more angel investing has now paid off. BBAA fully supports the extension of EIS tax relief to investors from 20% to 30% from 6 April 2011, removal of many of the previous restrictions as well as the significant extension to Entrepreneurs Relief. We are now hopeful that the bid for a proposed new £100m Angel Co-investment fund presented by Capital for Enterprise Ltd late last year will receive support from The Regional Growth Fund, which is scheduled to be announced next month.