SEIS advance assurance
SEIS Advance Assurance Checklist
Before you apply for SEIS advance assurance, it helps to know exactly what HMRC checks and what you need to submit. This checklist covers both: the conditions your company must meet to qualify, and the documents to prepare for a clean first-time application. If you would rather not work through it by hand, the free eligibility check runs the same tests automatically in about five minutes.
Does your company qualify?
A SEIS-qualifying company must meet all of these:
- Trading for less than three years.
- Fewer than 25 full-time equivalent employees.
- Gross assets of no more than £350,000 immediately before the share issue.
- Carrying on a new qualifying trade (it must be the company's first trade).
- UK-established, unquoted, and not controlled by another company.
- Raising no more than £250,000 in total under SEIS, across all rounds.
- Issuing new, fully paid, ordinary shares, subscribed for in cash, with no preferential rights.
- Planning to spend the money on a qualifying trade within three years.
- Issuing SEIS shares before any EIS or VCT shares in the same round.
Some trades are excluded, for example financial services and property development. For the full conditions, see the SEIS advance assurance guide.
What to prepare for your application
A complete SEIS advance assurance submission to HMRC's Venture Capital Reliefs Team usually includes:
- A business plan.
- Financial forecasts, including a three-year cashflow and profit-and-loss projection.
- An up-to-date structure chart and details of the shares being issued.
- Details of the proposed raise: how much, from how many investors, and on what terms.
- Your latest accounts, if the company has filed any.
- A covering letter that addresses each of HMRC's qualifying conditions directly.
Before you submit
The two things that most often delay an application are an incomplete submission and a covering letter that does not address HMRC's conditions head-on. Check that every condition above is met and evidenced, that your figures are consistent across documents, and that any excluded-trade risk is identified and explained before HMRC raises it.
Run the checklist automatically, free
You can test your company against every SEIS condition in about five minutes, with no account and no email sign-up.