One of the most frequent questions we are asked by
clients when advising them on applications for EIS and SEIS
clearance is 'how long will it take?'
In this article, we seek to provide businesses with
clarity on the time that should be allowed when preparing for and
submitting their EIS (and SEIS) Advance Assurance Requests (AARs).
Using HMRC data on application processing times we share our advice
on the application process to hopefully support in reducing
unnecessary delays.
We analysed this data for the first time in 2020, and the
2018-2019 findings showed that whilst there was an improvement
regarding processing times of EIS applications year-on-year, more
than 50% of applications were still taking 30+ days to resolve.
However, in the years since, new data from HMRC has revealed that
there has been a significant improvement in the processing speed
with only 26% of applications taking more than 30 days to resolve
during the course of the last tax year,
