Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change.
Below we've put together some general information about making EIS tax relief claims with HMRC. Everyone's circumstances are different, and this is generic information. Whilst we do our best to keep it up to date, HMRC's website and processes are liable to change without warning. It's important to speak to a qualified and regulated financial or tax adviser if you are at all unsure.
First, when it comes to an EIS claim there is no separate filing and no deadline of its own, because the claim rides on your annual return. Second, every EIS investment you made in the year goes on that one return, however many companies are involved. And third, you do not send your certificates to HMRC; you keep them and produce them only if asked.
In practice, claiming your Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) relief comes down to two boxes:
The total of everything you are claiming on in box 2 of the SA101 pages
One line per investment in box 19 of the main return.
Note, you cannot start the process without having your EIS3 certificate(s) or the associated UIR number issued by HMRC.
Form EIS3 comes from the company you invested in once your shares are issued. Where you invested through an HMRC-approved knowledge-intensive fund you receive one consolidated form EIS5 instead.
Four things on it are what your claim needs: the Company name, the Amount subscribed, the Date of issue of the shares, and the Unique investment reference (UIR) number. The UIR is HMRC's identifier for that share issue.
Two other boxes on the certificate are worth reading. It records whether the company was a knowledge-intensive company at the time of the share issue, which is what decides whether the investment can count towards the £2m annual limit rather than £1m. And it gives a termination date for these shares, which is the three-year date your relief has to survive to.
Getting the certificate is the slowest part of the process. Several months between investing and receiving one is normal for a direct investment, and through a fund it usually takes longer and arrives in batches. The FAQ below explains what drives the wait.
The tax year you are filing for is not the tax year you are in. A return filed by 31 January 2027 is the return for 2025/26, so it carries shares issued to you between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026, plus anything you are carrying back into that year. Shares issued after 5 April 2026 belong on the 2026/27 return you would file by 31 January 2028, unless you carry them back.
Two exceptions change the year:
Approved knowledge-intensive funds. With an EIS5, relief applies to the tax year in which the fund closed, not the year the underlying shares were issued. Subscribe in March 2026 to a fund that closes in October 2026 and the relief falls in 2026/27, even though that may or may not be when shares were issued.
Carry back. You can treat some or all of your shares as though they were issued in the previous tax year. See the FAQ on claiming EIS relief for a previous tax year below.
Say you subscribed £10,000 to Acme Ltd, with shares issued on 12 June 2025, and £5,000 to Beta Systems Ltd, with shares issued on 2 October 2025. On your 2025/26 return:
Box 2, "Other tax reliefs", page Ai 2 of the SA101: 15000
That box takes one figure, the total of every EIS subscription you are claiming on for the year.
Box 19, "Any other information", page TR 7 of the main return (SA100): one line for each company, giving its name, the amount, the share issue date and the UIR.
Box 2 carries the total. Box 19 carries the breakdown. Figures above are illustrative.
That line-per-company rule is where the time goes. A single direct investment is one line. Invest through a fund and it is one line for every company the fund has backed on your behalf, each copied off a separate certificate (unless, rarely, it is an EIS5 fund). Whoever manages the fund should be able to give you the whole set in one file rather than leaving you to work through the certificates one at a time. It is worth asking.
The online return asks for the same information as the paper boxes above: the total you are claiming on, and the details of each investment. Where it asks whether you have other tax reliefs to claim, answer yes so that the relevant section appears. If you report under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, you make the same claim through your compatible software instead.
You do not have to be in self assessment to claim, but check what your certificate actually contains before you plan around it.
HMRC's guidance assumes the EIS3 comes with a claim form for you to complete and return. In practice, certificates are frequently issued as the compliance certificate alone, with no claim section anywhere on them.
If yours has a claim form, complete it: enter the tax year and the amount you are claiming on, tick the box if you would rather have the relief through your tax code than as a repayment, then sign it and post it to the address shown. If yours does not, go back to whoever issued it and ask for the full certificate rather than writing to HMRC without one.
Use this route when your EIS3 arrives after you have already filed, when you pay tax through PAYE and do not file a return, or when you are claiming capital gains deferral relief. HMRC can give the relief by adjusting your PAYE code or your payments on account. Full HMRC guidance is in helpsheet HS341.
For income tax relief, five years after the 31 January following the tax year of your investment. For shares issued in 2025/26 that means 31 January 2032. Deferral relief runs on the same clock.
Loss relief is the exception, and it is much tighter. To set a share loss against your income you have one year from the 31 January following the tax year of the loss. Against capital gains instead, the ordinary four-year limit applies.
On the capital gains pages of your return, form SA108, rather than the additional information pages you used for income tax relief. To set the loss against your income, use box 41, "Losses used against income". Where the shares still exist but are worthless, make a negligible value claim first, coded NVC in box 36, so HMRC treats them as disposed of at nil value.
You claim company by company, not across your portfolio, so if one company in a fund fails while the rest are still held you can claim on that one.
Box numbers are those on the 2025/26 forms; check against the form you are actually filing.
For how the relief is calculated and what it is worth at each tax rate, see how EIS loss relief works.
Complete the deferral section of the EIS3 or EIS5 showing the gain you are deferring and the shares you are matching it against, attach it to the capital gains summary pages, and enter code OTH in box 36 on page CG 2, or MUL if you are making more than one type of claim on the same return.
The gain and the investment have to line up in time: the EIS shares must be issued in the period starting one year before and ending three years after the gain arose. HMRC will not allow deferral relief without an EIS3 for that particular investment.
For which gains qualify and how long the deferral lasts, see deferring capital gains tax with EIS.
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