Autumn Budget 2025: A Major Boost for Startups and Investors

The Enterprise Investment Scheme (“EIS”) has been one of the UK’s most effective tools for funnelling early-stage capital into promising businesses.

The Autumn Budget 2025 has taken that a step further, almost doubling key limits and opening the door to significantly more investment.

What’s changed?

With immediate effect, the following EIS thresholds have been increased:

• Gross Assets Requirement: The cap rises from £15m to £30m, bringing many more scale-ups — especially asset-heavy businesses — back within scope.
• Annual Investment Limit (Company): Companies can now raise up to £10m per year under EIS, up from £5m.
• Lifetime Investment Limit (Company): The combined EIS and VCT funding cap has doubled from £12m to £24m.

You still have compliance to navigate

Although the limits are now far more generous, the compliance requirements remain tight. If you fail compliance your investors will fail to secure tax relief. A well-structured round complying with HMRC rules is the only way to ensure both the company and your investors receive the tax reliefs they expect.  Compliance and guidance is a core specialism for Gannons.

Our corporate team can help you:

• Check eligibility against the expanded and existing EIS criteria.
• Prepare Advance Subscription Agreements to allow investment funds to be received before shares are issued, without losing relief.
• Secure Advance Assurance from HMRC so investors have certainty before they commit.
• Prepare and review all documentation to ensure the raise is structured properly from a legal and tax perspective.
• Manage post-investment filings to protect the investor reliefs.

If you’re planning a fund raise, the benefits of EIS are an opportunity you don’t want to miss. Get in touch and we’ll help you make full use of the expanded EIS limits.