The treasury have announced the removal of Enterprise Investment Scheme tax relief for community energy projects with almost immediate effect – and will not be replacing it with Social Investment Tax Relief, as promised.
This means that members of community energy projects will be ineligible for the tax reliefs of SEIS, EIS and SITR for shares issued from November 30th 2015 (where projects are also in receipt of FIT or ROCs etc).
This change has come with no warning and was announced directly to the House of Commons last week as an addition to the Finance Bill which is currently progressing through Parliament. Community energy advocates around the country have been taken aback by this unexpected statement, the speed with which changes are being made, and the reversal of earlier announcements on the intention to replace EIS with SITR. There appears to be no mechanism to challenge this decision.
We are urging everyone to take this opportunity to help all projects with live share offers to meet their share offer targets swiftly. The change does not affect any existing shareholding or applications with us, unless you are still to make payment.
New share offer closing dates – 20-26 November
A whole host of excellent projects have shares available. All have wider community and environmental benefits as well as offering a fair return to members. All these share offers will now have a closing date of NOVEMBER 20-26th 2015 . It is possible there will be one or two more opening soon too, please check our live page for updates
Support community energy
All of these projects have been in development for months, if not years (in one case almost 2 decades!), led chiefly by volunteers keen to tackle climate change by using renewable resources in their area.
Please support them to reach their targets, spread the word to others keen to support and contact your MP to complain about the unfair treatment of community energy.