Land of Hope and Technology February 2016 | Page 10

ISSUE 1

Government is doing
its best
Recent years has seen growing support for
entrepreneurial business via tax incentives.
EIS, which itself grew out of the older
Business Start-Up Scheme, was launched
in late 1993/early 1994. At the time of
launch the then Chief Secretary of The
Treasury, Michael Portillo said “The purpose
of Enterprise Investment Schemes is to
recognise that unquoted trading companies
can often face considerable difficulties in
realising relatively small amounts of share
capital. The new scheme is intended to
provide a well-targeted means for some of
those problems to be overcome.”
In April 2012, the UK government introduced
the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme
(SEIS), offering significant tax breaks to
investors in start-up businesses.
According to a report, Nation of Angels, in
2014 55 per cent of the total investments in
angels’ investment portfolios were made-up
of EIS schemes and 24 per cent SEIS.

More recently, the UK chancellor has
announced that people will be able to cash
all of their pensions, once they pass a certain
age, rather than just 25 per cent as used to
be the case. This may well lead to a rise in
older entrepreneurs looking to use some of
the money that they had accumulated in their
pension to fund a business that can occupy
them and generate an income in the latter
years of their working life.