Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 18
18
Deferred
Launch a Female Enterprise Investment Scheme with higher incentives for women-led businesses.
Recommendation
The Government should launch a Female Enterprise Investment Scheme to sit alongside the EIS and SEIS, with higher incentives to specifically drive investment in women-led businesses. People who invest in women-led businesses should receive greater benefits. Existing biases in the investment landscape and a lack of awareness of existing reliefs show that a new, easily marketable, marquee incentive is required. Such an investment in female entrepreneurship by the Government would serve to demonstrate its commitment to supporting female-generated economic growth. The scheme should allow SEIS-level tax breaks of up to a £2 million threshold. (Recommendation, Paragraph 73)
Government response summary AI-generated
The government supports the goal of promoting investment in women-led businesses but believes this is best achieved by amplifying existing industry-led initiatives like the Invest in Women Taskforce, rather than launching a new Female Enterprise Investment Scheme.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
As with all tax reliefs, EIS and SEIS must remain consistent with our international obligations, including subsidy control rules. Creating an additional scheme with targeted differential rates for particular groups of businesses would raise complex design and compliance issues which would need to be examined carefully. It would also need to be assessed against the fiscal context. The Government is committed to repairing the public finances, and any new or enhanced reliefs must be weighed against difficult trade-offs elsewhere.
Read the full response on Parliament ↗