How to Claim EIS Tax Relief: EIS3 Certificate and Self Assessment

To claim EIS tax relief, you wait for the company you invested in to send you an EIS3 certificate, then enter the details from that certificate on your Self Assessment tax return. If you don’t file Self Assessment, the EIS3 itself contains a claim form you can complete and post to HMRC. The relief is worth 30% of what you invested, up to £1 million a tax year (or £2 million if the amount above £1 million went into knowledge-intensive companies).¹

Wait for Your EIS3 Certificate

You cannot claim anything until the EIS3 arrives. The certificate is generated at the end of a chain that starts with the company, not you. After issuing your shares, the company has to trade for at least four months before it can file its compliance statement (EIS1) with HMRC.² HMRC then reviews it and, if satisfied, issues form EIS2 back to the company with a Unique Investment Reference for that share issue. Only then can the company complete an EIS3 for each investor and send it out.³

There is a back-end deadline that matters to you. The company must file its compliance statement within two years of the end of the tax year in which the shares were issued, or within two years of the end of the four-month trading period, whichever is later.² Miss that window and no EIS3 can be issued, so no relief is available. If months are ticking by without a certificate, chase the company.

Investors who came in through a knowledge-intensive approved investment fund get a form EIS5 from the fund manager instead, which can cover several qualifying companies in one document.³ The claim process from there is the same.

Check the Certificate Before You Claim

When your EIS3 lands, compare it against your own share certificate and bank records. The form shows the Unique Investment Reference for the share issue, the company’s name and registered address, the amount you subscribed, and the date the shares were issued. That issue date matters twice: it fixes which tax year the claim belongs to, and it starts the three-year holding period you have to complete to keep the relief.

If the subscription amount on the EIS3 doesn’t match what you actually paid, ask the company to correct it before you file. A mismatch between the certificate figure and the number on your return is one of the common reasons HMRC queries a claim. Keep the paper EIS3 even after filing online; you may need it later.⁴

Enter the Claim on Your Self Assessment Return

If you file Self Assessment, the claim goes in two places. The main entry is Box 2 of the SA101 supplementary pages (Additional Information), where you put the total amount on which you’re claiming EIS relief.⁵ The ceiling in that box is £1 million, or £2 million if the amount above £1 million was invested in knowledge-intensive companies.¹

You also list each investment individually in Box 19 on page TR 7 of the SA100 main return. For every holding, enter the UIR from the EIS3, the company name, the amount you’re claiming relief on, and the share issue date.⁴ If your total claim runs over £1 million (or over £2 million with knowledge-intensive companies in the mix), you also need to say how you want the relief attributed between your investments.

The system does the arithmetic. Relief is 30% of the qualifying amount,³ so £50,000 invested cuts your income tax bill by £15,000 for the year. One limit to note: the relief cannot take your income tax below zero. Any excess is simply lost, not refunded and not carried forward as income tax relief.

Claiming on Paper

If you don’t file Self Assessment, or if your EIS3 turned up after you’d already submitted your return, you can claim by post. The claim form sits inside the EIS3 (or EIS5) itself. Fill it in and send it to your usual HMRC Self Assessment office; the address is on any previous HMRC correspondence, or you can find it through your Personal Tax Account on GOV.UK.⁴

Paper claims are worked manually and take longer than an online return, often several weeks and longer around the 31 January peak. Once HMRC has processed it, you’ll either get a refund directly or see your PAYE code adjusted so the relief comes through as higher take-home pay across the rest of the tax year. HMRC will send a notice of coding or an adjustment letter confirming what has changed.

Carrying Relief Back to the Previous Tax Year

You can treat all or part of an EIS investment as if it had been made in the tax year before the one in which the shares were actually issued, provided you haven’t already used up that earlier year’s relief limit. This is useful if your tax bill was higher last year, or if a single large investment would otherwise waste part of the current year’s relief.

Say you subscribe £1.5 million for shares in 2025–26. You could claim relief on £1 million against 2025–26 income and carry back £500,000 to 2024–25, assuming your 2024–25 limit hadn’t already been used. You make the carry-back election on your Self Assessment return, or on the paper claim form inside the EIS3.

Hold the Shares for Three Years or Lose the Relief

The relief is conditional. You have to hold your EIS shares for at least three years from the date they were issued. Sell before that point and HMRC will claw the relief back.⁶

Sell at or above the price you paid, and the full 30% relief is withdrawn.
Sell below the price you paid, and the relief is withdrawn in proportion to what you received.
You also lose the CGT exemption that would normally apply to a disposal after three years, so any gain on the sale becomes chargeable.

Transferring shares to a spouse or civil partner doesn’t trigger clawback, but the three-year clock doesn’t restart either. The receiving spouse simply inherits the original issue date and has to see out whatever remains of the holding period.

You also need to stay eligible. Income tax relief isn’t available to anyone connected with the company, which includes its employees and directors (with a limited exception for business angel directors), or anyone who holds more than 30% of the share capital when combined with associates such as a spouse, civil partner, or parents and children. Becoming connected during the holding period can trigger clawback in the same way as an early sale.

Separate Claims: CGT Deferral and Loss Relief

Two related reliefs sit outside the income tax claim covered above and are worth flagging so you don’t assume the EIS3 claim covers them.

If you used an EIS investment to defer a capital gain from selling another asset, that deferral is claimed through the Capital Gains Tax pages of your Self Assessment return, with the calculation set out in HMRC helpsheet HS297.⁷ Deferral has no annual cap and is open to investors connected with the company who can’t claim the income tax side. The deferred gain comes back into charge when you eventually sell the EIS shares or otherwise break the scheme conditions.

If your EIS shares later become worthless or you sell them at a loss, share loss relief is claimed separately under helpsheet HS286. The allowable loss is your subscription price minus any EIS income tax relief you received and kept, and you can set it against income or capital gains. The normal cap on income tax loss relief doesn’t apply to losses on EIS shares.⁸

1
HM Revenue & Customs. Additional Information Notes SA101 Notes 2024-25
2
GOV.UK. Venture Capital Schemes Manual – VCM14040
3
HM Revenue & Customs. Venture Capital Schemes Tax Relief for Investors
4
HM Revenue & Customs. HS341 Enterprise Investment Scheme – Income Tax Relief
5
GOV.UK. Self Assessment Additional Information SA101
6
HM Revenue & Customs. HS297 Capital Gains Tax and Enterprise Investment Scheme 2024
7
HM Revenue & Customs. HS297 Capital Gains Tax and Enterprise Investment Scheme 2025
8
HM Revenue & Customs. HS286 Negligible Value Claims and Income Tax Losses on Disposals of Shares