SEIS and EIS pitch decks
The five pitch-deck slides that get SEIS and EIS applications refused
Most SEIS and EIS applications that stall do not fail on substance. They fail on a sentence. HMRC reads your pitch deck as ambient context to the formal application, and not the way an investor reads it. An investor is looking for the upside. A caseworker is looking for the disqualifying noun. Five slides cause the great majority of language-driven refusals. Here is what HMRC reads for on each, and the substitution that says the same thing in language the schemes treat as qualifying.
1. Use of funds
(triggers the use-of-proceeds test)
What HMRC reads for: any spend that is not deploying new capital into the qualifying trade's growth.
Avoid working capital, general corporate purposes, runway extension, acquisition, M&A, paying down director loans, repaying convertible notes. Instead, name the specific growth spend, hiring, customer acquisition, R&D, market entry, over a stated period, and ringfence anything non-qualifying outside the SEIS or EIS tranche. The two phrases founders write without thinking, "working capital" and "general corporate purposes", are the most insidious.
2. Business model
(triggers the excluded-activities test)
What HMRC reads for: revenue that looks like an excluded activity, lending, leasing, royalties, licensing third-party IP.
Avoid take a percentage of each transaction, share of payment volume, royalty stream, licensing income, rental income, interest spread. The plain alternative is usually true and describes the same economics: subscription, platform fee, a software licence on your own IP, service fee. Same economics, different noun.
3. Traction and financials
(triggers the risk-to-capital test)
What HMRC reads for: signals that the investor's money is not really at risk.
Avoid contracted revenue, locked-in customers, guaranteed, asset-backed, capital-protected, de-risked, recession-proof. Each of these reassures an investor and disqualifies you with HMRC. Frame the same strength as ambition plus honestly-named downside: a contracted pipeline subject to churn, targeted returns conditional on delivery, the principal risks named specifically. The investor wants to know what could go right; HMRC wants to know what could go wrong.
4. Strategy and roadmap
(triggers the use-of-proceeds test again)
What HMRC reads for: growth through acquisition, which is read as an intention for the current funds even when you did not mean it that way.
Avoid Phase 2 roll-up, strategic consolidation, acquiring incumbents, buy-and-build. Express the identical ambition organically: adjacent markets, new product lines, new geographies, building out the team. The growth story is the same; the noun is different.
5. The ask
(triggers the investor-terms test)
What HMRC reads for: preference shares and pre-arranged returns sitting on the scheme class.
Avoid 1x liquidation preference, cumulative dividend, redemption right, guaranteed exit, full ratchet on the SEIS or EIS shares. Keep the scheme class plain ordinary, ranking pari passu, and attribute any preferences clearly to a separate non-scheme class.
The substitution is not a euphemism. It is the same activity, named in the language HMRC actually reads. If a phrase cannot be substituted without changing what your company does, the issue is real and belongs at the level of the business model, not the wording.
Not sure you qualify yet? Check your eligibility. For the full document-by-document audit, read the Playbook.