Tax reliefs are a vital government initiative to encourage investment into smaller companies that can deliver innovation and choice into our economy. Whilst the latest HMRC statistics are underwhelming, we see great potential for SITR as an enabler to grow social enterprises and charities.

Action Homeless CEO Mark Grant writes why he believes simplifying Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) could be a game-changer that would allow them to raise flexible, patient and risk-tolerant capital, which they could use to provide more affordable housing to people affected by homelessness.

Outside the social impact investing world, what motivates someone to become an investor into social enterprises? Dr Thelma Lovick, a professor and research fellow at University of Bristol writes about what attracted her to social impact investing. She also offers her perspective for those interested in following her example.

As the recent review of Social Investment Tax Relief (‘What a Relief!’) outlines, there have been challenges to SITR reaching its potential. Here, we look at three actions we can take to help unlock it.

Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) was recently ranked 4th out of 46 in a Europe-wide study on the effectiveness of tax incentives to foster investment into SMEs and start-ups. It is also the only tax relief of all those reviewed that is specifically targetted at charities and social enterprises. So this is definitely something to celebrate!

Together with Bates Wells, we are pleased to publish A Simple Guide to Tax Reliefs. As well as covering the relatively new Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR), it also covers SEIS, EIS, CITR, IFISAs and Gift Aid.