Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Mel Stride MP, has responded to a series of parliamentary questions on the administration of the Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR):

HMRC administers the tax-advantaged venture capital schemes: the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, Venture Capital Trusts and the Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) scheme.

HMRC operates the same targets for all advance assurance applications and submissions of statutory compliance statements under the tax-advantaged venture capital schemes, and deals with around 12,000 cases each year.

HMRC accepts around 70% of all advance assurance and compliance statements without any further enquiry.

On 9 October 2017 HMRC had 25 SITR advance assurance applications on hand.

HMRC aims to respond to all straightforward advance assurance applications received within 15 working days. The target for more complex cases is 40 working days. Cases may take longer to finalise depending on whether further information is needed.

There is no standard length of time to process an advance assurance. Some application will require further clarification, additional information from an EIS company or a social enterprise. Others can be processed on the information supplied by the company or the social enterprise. HMRC attempts to process all applications as speedily as possible.

The latest statistics on EIS, SEIS and SITR will be published on 31 October. These will include statistics on SITR investments and advance assurance applications received in 2014-15 and 2015-16.

A consultation was held last year on ways to streamline the advance assurance service and a summary of responses was published in March. The documents can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/tax-advantaged-venture-capital-schemes-streamlining-the-advance-assurance-service. HMRC will be providing an update on progress in due course.

All available data related to the Enterprise Investment Scheme and Venture Capital Trusts are available in the annual Enterprise Investment Scheme and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme Statistics(https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/enterprise-investment-scheme-and-seed-enterprise-investment-scheme-statistics-october-2016) and the Venture Capital Trusts Statistics(https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/venture-capital-trusts-statistics) publications.