After the investments are made into the underlying EIS qualifying companies, a tax certificate will be issued (EIS3s or an EIS5), which can either be submitted to HMRC or you can include the investment information in the annual tax return.
We report all the investment data that you need in the Investor Portal within the self-serve section under EIS status report. The easiest way to submit the EIS investments is to use this data to submit on your annual tax return, so the tax certificates are not needed.
For an unapproved EIS fund, multiple EIS3s will be issued after each underlying investment is made. The EIS3s can either be submitted together after they have all been issued, or submitted one at a time, which provides marginally better cash flow but more administration. You can claim income tax and defer a capital gain according to each EIS3.
For a HMRC-approved EIS fund, such as is Knowledge-Intensive (KI) EIS fund, one tax certificate will be issued after all the investments have been made. Therefore, the cash flow from the tax reliefs is delayed until the end of the deployment phase, which although you can lock in income taxes in a specific year, makes deployment speed even more important for a KI fund.