The SEIS and EIS venture capital schemes offer investors some very significant tax relief options to incentivise investments into early stage startups that are considered high risk.
But how good a deal is SEIS, and what are those tax reliefs really worth?
Our latest fund, the B2B SaaS SEIS Fund offers investors the chance to invest in SEIS eligible pre-seed companies, and to gain access to SEIS tax reliefs while they build a portfolio of promising new companies, hand picked with the benefit of Founders Factory's extensive expertise with new tech businesses.
While some investors see ‘high risk’ and don’t look any further, an increasing number of investors in SEIS are realising that in certain situations they still stand to gain more by investing than they would if they chose not to invest and claimed no tax relief, even if their shares were to fall in value.
Below, we look at some less favourable investing scenarios to see much tax relief investors receive when investing in SEIS, and how far it goes towards offsetting the risk of losing your investment, even when the investment doesn't necessarily perform. If you would like to watch our recent webinar where we discuss SEIS tax reliefs, you can view this below.
Scenario 1: Investment sees no growth.
An investor invests £100,000 into an SEIS fund. The investor has a capital gains tax bill of £28,000 for selling a second home. In this scenario, the SEIS shares the investor acquires do not increase in value and remain flat for the duration of his investment.
By making this investment, the investor is able to:
- Claim 50% in income tax relief (£50,000).
- Claim exemption from 50% of his £28,000 capital gains tax bill (£14,000).
While the shares have not increased in value, if and when they do, and are sold, no capital gains tax will be payable on them. They will also be exempt from inheritance tax, provided they have been held for two years prior to death.
Even though this investment has seen no increase in value, the investor recovers 64% of his investment in tax relief.
Effective gain: 64% of invested capital.
Scenario 2: Investment grows by 50%
An investor invests £100,000 into an SEIS fund. The investor has a capital gains tax bill of £28,000 for selling a second home. In this scenario, the SEIS shares the investor acquires increase in value by 50%.
By making this investment, the investor is able to:
- Claim 50% in income tax relief (£50,000).
- Claim exemption from 50% of his £28,000 capital gains tax bill (£14,000).
- Realise a gain of £50,000 on their investment.
In this example, even though the shares have only increased in value by 50%, with the tax relief on top, it means that the effective gain is £114,000, or 114%. Most funds target a return of around 3x for their investors, but this example shows that even a very modest increase, when combined with tax relief, will see investors make their money back.
Effective gain: 114% of invested capital.
Scenario 3: Investment falls to zero
An investor invests £100,000 into an SEIS fund. The investor has a capital gains tax bill of £28,000 for selling a second home. In this scenario, the SEIS shares the investor acquires fall to zero value. This example demonstrates how much investors can still claim relief in this situation, and make use of the loss relief facility to offset the loss of capital.
By making this investment, the investor is able to:
- Claim 50% in income tax relief (£50,000).
- Claim exemption from 50% of his £28,000 capital gains tax bill (£14,000).
- Claim 45% of at risk capital as loss relief (£22,500).
While this investor’s shares have fallen to zero, the amount he is able to claim in tax relief comes to £86,500. Because his shares have fallen in value, in this example, he is able to claim loss relief. This can be claimed when shares fall in value below their effective cost (the amount paid once any tax relief claimed is deducted). This means that even when the shares purchased for £100,000 fall to zero in value, after tax relief the investors effective loss is only £13,500.
Effective loss: 13.5% of invested capital.
Get started with SEIS investing
While EIS and SEIS investments are high risk, and investors should only invest money they can afford to lose, you can see from the examples above how much investors receive back in tax relief, and just how useful those tax reliefs can be in certain situations, particularly around capital gains tax.
If you factor into the equation the potential for a signficant return on top of this, at 3x or more, then you can begin to see why investing in these schemes makes sense for so many investors.
SyndicateRoom offers the following SEIS and EIS products to investors
Founders Factory B2B SaaS Investment Programme SEIS FUND 1
This fund, powered by Founders Factory, presents an opportunity to invest in a portfolio of eight promising new pre-seed companies in the B2B SaaS sector. Founders Factory will support these companies with a programme designed to help them kickstart their growth at the earliest possible stage, as well as ready them for introduction to its contacts at top technology companies, VCs and corporates. Minimum investment: £10,000
The Access EIS Fund
We spent three years analysing the UK startup market and found that in its entirety, it grows by around 25% year on year.
We set about devising a method to capture this market growth for our investors by building them the most diverse portfolio currently available on the market. Minimum investment: £5,000
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