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Is your company SEIS-eligible?

Type your company name or registration number. We pull your record straight from Companies House and run it through the SEIS, EIS, and knowledge-intensive qualifying tests we can verify from public data. The harder tests (assets, employees, use of funds) get flagged for a specialist.

Source: HMG Companies House public data. We do not store your search. This is a first-pass eligibility view, not advice.

What this checks

Company age against SEIS (3y), EIS (7y), and KIC (10y) windows. Active status. UK Ltd structure. SIC codes against the excluded-trades list.

What it doesn't check

Gross assets (£350k SEIS / £15m EIS), employee count (25 / 250 / 500), use-of-funds plan, control test, risk-to-capital. These need an accountant.

Source

Companies House public data API. We never store your search. Free to use.

How the SEIS eligibility check works

Most UK founders raising under the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) or the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) want to know one thing first: does my company actually qualify? The legislation is precise but the qualifying tests are spread across several Companies House fields, HMRC's excluded-trades guidance (s192 ITA 2007), and a set of accountant-only checks on assets, employees, and use of funds.

This tool runs the structural tests that can be answered from public data automatically. Type your company name, we pull your Companies House record over the official Public Data API, and the diagnostic returns a verdict per scheme:

  • SEIS — the company must be UK-incorporated, active, under 3 years past the start of its qualifying trade, with gross assets under £350,000 and fewer than 25 full-time-equivalent employees, and carrying on a qualifying trade. SEIS investors get 50% income tax relief on subscriptions up to £200,000 per tax year.
  • EIS — extends past the SEIS lifetime cap. Up to £5 million per year and £12 million over the company's lifetime, available throughout the first 7 years of commercial sale, with 30% investor relief and a £15 million gross-asset limit.
  • KIC (knowledge-intensive company) — an enhanced EIS variant for R&D-heavy companies. Doubles the EIS caps to £10 million annual / £20 million lifetime, raises the employee limit to 500, and stretches the commercial-sale window to 10 years.

The verdict is conservative on purpose. Where Companies House data alone cannot decide a test (the company is borderline on age, the SIC code is ambiguous, the structure is unusual), the diagnostic flags the test as amber rather than guessing. The harder qualifying conditions — gross assets at the moment of share issue, FTE headcount, the use-of-funds plan, the control test, and the risk-to-capital condition for EIS — are listed separately as “what your accountant still needs to confirm”.

An ineligible verdict is not always final. Companies that have outgrown the SEIS or EIS age window can sometimes still raise scheme-relieved capital through a younger trading subsidiary, an IP carve-out into a fresh vehicle, or by claiming knowledge-intensive status to extend the EIS window. A specialist can model whether the structural cost of any of those is worth the relief unlocked.

Frequently asked

How does the SEIS eligibility check work?
Type your UK company name or registration number. We send a request to the Companies House Public Data API, retrieve your record, and run the qualifying tests we can verify from public data: company age (against the SEIS 3-year, EIS 7-year and KIC 10-year windows), active status, UK private-limited structure, jurisdiction, and the SIC codes you have declared against the SEIS/EIS excluded-trades list. We return a verdict per scheme plus a per-test breakdown.
Is this a real SEIS qualification or just a guess?
It is a first-pass eligibility check, not a final ruling. The tests we run are the structural ones HMRC and an accountant would run first, and where Companies House data alone says 'fail' (for example, the company is 12 years old) the verdict is reliable. The tests we cannot run from public data — gross assets, employee count, use of funds, control test, risk-to-capital, KIC R&D-spend percentage, SEIS lifetime cap headroom — are flagged for a specialist. Treat it as the same kind of pre-screen a SEIS accountant would do in the first ten minutes of a call.
What does SEIS-eligible mean?
A UK company is broadly SEIS-eligible if it is an active, unquoted, UK-incorporated private limited company, fewer than 3 years past the start of its qualifying trade, with gross assets below £350,000 and fewer than 25 full-time-equivalent employees, carrying on a trade that is not on HMRC's excluded-activities list. Investors who subscribe for SEIS shares can claim 50% income tax relief on up to £200,000 per tax year and a capital gains tax exemption on the eventual disposal of the shares (after a three-year holding period).
What's the difference between SEIS, EIS, and KIC?
SEIS is for the company's first £250,000 of qualifying investment, in the first 3 years of trade, with 50% investor income tax relief. EIS picks up where SEIS ends: up to £5 million per year and £12 million lifetime, available throughout the company's first 7 years of commercial sale, with 30% investor income tax relief. KIC (knowledge-intensive company) is an enhanced EIS variant for R&D-intensive companies: £10 million annual cap, £20 million lifetime, 500 employee limit, and a 10-year commercial sale window. Most growth tech and biotech startups use SEIS for the first round and transition to EIS or KIC-EIS for series A.
Which trades are excluded from SEIS and EIS?
The HMRC excluded-activities list (s192 ITA 2007) includes property development and dealing, financial services and lending, insurance, legal services, accountancy, farming and market gardening, forestry, hotels and similar accommodation, residential care homes, coal and steel production, electricity and gas generation (with limited carve-outs), and shipbuilding. The diagnostic checks each of your declared SIC codes against this list and flags red, amber, or green per code with a plain-language reason. An ancillary excluded activity inside a larger qualifying trade can sometimes still qualify; that is one of the things a specialist confirms.
Why does my old company show as ineligible?
SEIS has a hard 3-year window from the start of the qualifying trade; EIS has 7 years from first commercial sale (10 for KIC). If your company is older than these windows, the schemes are off the table for further investment in the existing entity. That does not necessarily mean SEIS is dead for the underlying business — common workarounds include incorporating a new spinout vehicle that licenses the IP, structuring an EIS-extended round around knowledge-intensive status, or carving the qualifying trade into a younger subsidiary. A specialist can model whether any of these are worth the structural cost.
Do I need an accountant to apply for SEIS?
Technically no — you can file SEIS advance assurance and the SEIS1 compliance statement yourself. In practice the cost of a mistake is paid by your investors as a relief clawback rather than by you, and the documentation chain has more failure modes than first-time founders realise. Specialist accountants who file dozens of applications a month catch the issues that generalist DIY filers and even general-practice accountants routinely miss — particularly around the use-of-funds narrative and the share-class structure.
Is this tool free? Do you store my search?
Free. No sign-up. We do not store your search, your company name, or any of the diagnostic output. The Companies House API call goes from our server to Companies House and the result comes straight back to your browser — nothing is logged or persisted on our side.

Read more

Guide

The Complete Guide to SEIS and EIS for UK Founders

Service

SEIS Advance Assurance specialists, end-to-end