One more week to ask Government to improve access to subsidised capital through SITR
Melanie May | 11 July 2019 | News
The Government’s call for evidence on Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) closes a week from today, with Big Society Capital urging charities to have their say before the deadline.
SITR is the Government’s tax relief for social investment, introduced to encourage individuals to invest into social enterprises, charities and community businesses by offsetting the risk to investors. It can be used by social enterprises and charities to raise investment from individual investors with a window of at least three years before repayments start. It also offers subsidised investment returns, created by offering investors a 30% tax break on their investments which off-set the risk of investing.
The Government has published a Call for Evidence on Social Investment Tax Relief, which is due to close on 17 July 2019. The aim of the call for evidence is to help the government understand how the tax relief has been used since its introduction in 2014, including levels of take up and the impact it has had on social enterprises’ access to finance. It has a sunset clause that will bring the scheme to an end in April 2021, and the government has issued call for evidence to help inform a decision about its future.
Melanie Mills, Senior Director of Social Sector Engagement at Big Society Capital, commented:
“SITR is significant in terms of reach and opportunity: both for businesses delivering a social impact and investors who want to do good with their money. This consultation is the best chance social enterprises and charities currently have to voice their opinion to the Government about the need to improve their ability to access patient, affordable capital. Big Society Capital will also be responding, and laying out what we believe to be the most important changes that must be made to SITR to make it work for social enterprises and charities trying to access social investment.
“We would encourage all social enterprises and charities to respond to the consultation. We know that many simply don’t have enough time available, and so we have provided a template response form to the consultation which can be found on our website.”
The poll can be found here and respondents will then be signposted to the relevant template response.
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.