Jack Rose: What the EIS offers and how it works

The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) is a government initiative launched in 1994, designed to encourage investment by individuals into early-stage companies as an alternative source of funding to more traditional sources of capital. To balance the increased risk of investing in smaller companies, there are some attractive tax breaks offered by the government. Although more than 20 years old, the EIS heritage actually stretches back to 1981 through its original guise of the Business Start-up Scheme (‘BSUS') and then latterly the Business Expansion Scheme (‘BES') in 1983, before finally ...