Your SEIS window
is already
closing.

£250,000 at 50% relief — but only within three years of the day you started trading. Hassle checks whether you still qualify against your real data, and labels every figure that's only a guess.

Not tax advice. We show what we can verify and flag what we can't.

seis eligibility2 of 5 verified
Trade under 3 years oldIncorporated 8 May 2025 · first trade 2 Jul 2025 1yr 0moCompanies House
SEIS headroom£250,000 lifetime limit · £0 raised on your cap table £250,000Cap table
? Gross assets under £350,000Measured immediately before the shares are issued ~£42,000Your assumption
? Fewer than 25 full-time employeesAt the date of issue · connect payroll to verify this 3Your assumption
? Carrying on a qualifying tradeDeveloper tooling (SaaS) · some trades are excluded outright SaaSYour assumption
3 gates are your own figures. Confirm them with your accountant — we won't stamp an assumption as verified.
The window

Two clocks, and one of them
has already started.

SEIS runs from the day you started trading, not the day you incorporated. Most founders find out how much of it they've spent when they're already raising.

first trade · 2 Jul 202534% of the SEIS window usedSEIS closes · 2 Jul 2028
Now — SEIS
£250,000 at 50%
Trade under 3 years, gross assets under £350k, under 25 staff. Cheapest capital your investors will ever buy.
Then — EIS
£12m at 30%
Up to 7 years from first commercial sale, under 250 staff, gross assets under £15m. Bigger cheques, thinner relief.
After that
Full price
No scheme relief. Your angels are underwriting the whole downside themselves, and they price accordingly.

Both schemes need advance assurance before most angels will commit, and assurance needs a three-year forecast showing why you need the money and how it gets spent. Figures shown are the current HMRC limits; they change, and your circumstances decide which apply.

The part nobody else does

We won't mark your
assumption as verified.

Every SEIS template on the internet produces a document where your guess and your bank statement look identical. That's the document HMRC reads.

On Hassle

Each figure carries its source.
  • Company age and directors read from Companies House
  • Headroom read from your own cap table
  • Revenue read live from Stripe, not typed in
  • Your estimates stay labelled as estimates — in the pack, and in front of investors
  • You can see exactly which gates are still unproven

In the template

Every cell looks equally true.
  • No distinction between verified, self-reported and hoped-for
  • Gross assets guessed once and never revisited
  • Forecast built to hit the number the deck already claimed
  • Nobody finds the problem until assurance comes back
  • Angels discover it after they've wired
The angel's arithmetic

Know the number
they're actually running.

An experienced angel doesn't evaluate an SEIS cheque at face value — they net off the relief and the loss relief first. This is that calculation, so you know what they know before you're in the room.

Their cheque
£10,000
Income tax relief, claimed now£5,000
Net cost of the position£5,000
Loss relief if it goes to zero£2,250
Actually at risk45% taxpayer · enough income tax to relieve · held 3+ yrs · company stays qualifying£2,750
Cost per £1 of exposure28p
If it 5×s, after 3 years£40,000 gain, CGT-free
Capital is at risk. Early-stage shares are illiquid and most fail; relief can be withdrawn if the company or the investor stops qualifying. Assumes a 45% taxpayer with sufficient income tax to relieve, shares held 3+ years, and a company that qualifies. Illustrative only — not tax, investment or financial advice, and not an offer or invitation to invest.
What the number means

For a 45% taxpayer who qualifies for full relief, a £10,000 SEIS position carries roughly £2,750 of genuine downside — about 28p in the pound. That is roughly the figure an experienced angel is working from — before SEIS capital-gains reinvestment relief, which can reduce it further. Whether or not it is ever said out loud.

Why it lands

Downside framing beats upside pitching with anyone who has lost money before — which is every angel worth having on your cap table.

What kills it

Promising relief you can't deliver. If your company fails a gate, they lose the relief and you lose the relationship. That's why the gates come first on this page and not last.

The expensive mistake

A US SAFE can cost your
investors their relief.

SEIS and EIS relief attaches to newly issued shares. A SAFE isn't shares, and the way most are drafted, the money sits outside the scheme. A UK Advance Subscription Agreement can be structured to keep it.

ASA — what Hassle defaults to

Advance Subscription Agreement
  • Money now, shares on a defined future event
  • Longstop date of 6 months or less
  • Non-refundable, no interest, no investor protections
  • Can be structured to preserve SEIS/EIS relief
  • Discount or cap as the reward for going early

SAFE — imported without checking

Simple Agreement for Future Equity
  • Typically treated as a convertible right, not a share issue
  • Refund or repayment terms break the qualifying conditions
  • Long or open-ended conversion windows
  • Relief usually lost — discovered at the next round
  • Fine in the US. Expensive here.

Hassle presents both instruments in plain English, shows what each does to relief, and defaults UK rounds to an ASA. Your solicitor still drafts and signs off the documents — we don't.

Your side of the table

Bring your own solicitor
and accountant.

SEIS is not a solo exercise. Your accountant confirms gross assets and your solicitor drafts the ASA. Both can work inside the same room — on scopes you set, that you can revoke.

Your accountant

Confirms what we won't assume

Gross assets, employee count and qualifying trade are your figures, not ours. Invite your accountant to confirm them against the books — the pack updates and the gate stops saying “your assumption”.

Your solicitor

Sees the register, not your code

A legal reviewer gets the corporate and legal register only. No technical evidence, no customer data — the scope is enforced, not promised.

On your terms

Scoped, time-boxed, revocable

Every adviser grant is one you approve, capped to its own scope, and revocable in seconds. It appears in your audit log exactly like an investor request — nobody is added on your behalf.

Every adviser grant is scoped, time-boxed and revocable, and shows up in the same audit trail as an investor request. Founder approval is required for all of them — nobody is added on your behalf.

Run it yourself

Four commands, then it's
your accountant's problem.

Everything runs against evidence you've already connected. Nothing is invented to fill a cell.

founder@hassle — seis readiness

Gates before forecast

No point modelling three years of P&L for a company that fails on gross assets. The checks run first.

Show why you need it

HMRC needs to see why the raise is necessary and where it goes — so we build to the funding gap, not to a vanity number.

Provenance on every line

Each figure in the pack says where it came from. See the evidence model

After the raise

Relief can be taken back
for three years.

Most SEIS tools stop the day the money lands. That is the day your obligations start. The shares have to be held, the money has to be spent on the qualifying trade, and a disqualifying event in the next three years can claw the relief back — from your investors, not from you.

Hassle keeps watching. The same connected sources that proved your gates keep proving them, and you get told when something moves.

Hassle is not a tax adviser. Compliance tracking surfaces what we can observe from connected evidence; it does not replace your accountant or an HMRC determination.

Watched for you

  • Three-year holding period
  • Money spent on the qualifying trade
  • Cap table changes that affect relief
  • Headroom left for a later EIS round

Still yours to decide

  • Whether a trade change is disqualifying
  • How to treat a share buyback
  • What you tell HMRC
  • Anything your accountant should sign
The handoff

We build the forecast.
You take it anywhere.

HMRC wants a three-year forecast with your advance-assurance application. Building it from scratch in a spreadsheet is the part founders stall on — so Hassle populates it from the accounts you already connected, labels every figure as actual or assumption, and hands you the file. Hassle isn’t a law firm and doesn’t file your assurance; you approve exactly what leaves.

36

The three-year forecast

Month 1 to month 36 — revenue, cost of sales, gross margin, overheads and EBITDA. Connected months come from your actuals; the rest are your assumptions, marked as assumptions.

the file HMRC asks for
>_

The readiness pack

The forecast plus the eligibility gates, use of funds and cap table context — every figure stamped verified or assumed, so a reader can see which is which.

yours · Markdown, JSON or printable

Then it’s your accountant’s

Export it and take it to your accountant, your solicitor, or whichever platform is running your round. The pack is written to be read by all three.

you approve what leaves

Hassle is not a tax adviser, accountant or law firm, and nothing here is advice on your specific circumstances. SEIS and EIS eligibility is determined by HMRC.
Rates and limits shown are as at 29 July 2026, checked against HMRC — apply to use SEIS and HMRC — apply for advance assurance. Thresholds change at fiscal events; if the date above is more than six months old, treat every figure on this page as unverified and check the HMRC guidance directly.

Find out today, not
three gates in.

Connect what you already have and see which SEIS gates you actually clear.

> hassle seis readiness