Finance Bill published with details of BES scheme upgrades

1st of February 2007 by conor

The new Finance Bill has been published and is available on the Dept of Finance site. It looks like the new BES limits apply from Jan 1st 2007. But new schemes cannot be approved until the Bill gets through the Dáil and is OKed by the EU.

In summary:

The Business Expansion Scheme is being renewed from 1 January 2007 for a seven year period to 31 December 2013 subject to EU Commission State-Aid approval. The BES company limit is being increased from its current level of €1 million to €2 million, subject to a maximum of €1.5 million to be raised in a twelve month period. The investor limit is being increased from its current level of €31,750 to €150,000.

The Seed Capital Scheme is also being renewed from 1 January 2007 for a seven year period to 31 December 2013. The new BES limit of €2 million will also apply to the SCS, subject to a maximum of €1.5 million to be raised in a twelve month period. The investor limit is being increased from its current level of €31,750 to €100,000.

The following additional measures which were not announced in the Budget are also relevant to web2ireland:

  • replace the feasibility grant payment requirement with a requirement that the relevant County Enterprise Board provide a certificate validating the business proposal
  • require only that development agencies in future approve an employment grant for internationally traded services as opposed to actually paying the grant in order to gain entry to the scheme (with the grant, of course, being paid at a later stage)
  • allow an individual to reduce his/her shareholding under SCS below 15% after one year (rather than the current two years) to facilitate additional equity funding
  • increase the overall aggregate limit on amounts subscribed for share and loan capital of the company from €317,500 to €500,000 for an individual holding over 30% of the share capital of a company to ensure that the individual will not be regarded as connected with the company.

We’ll be doing a BES scheme in Argolon Solutions for LouderVoice once the new limits kick in. We’ll publish details here shortly for anyone who is interested.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 9:15 am and is filed under Irish Web2.0 News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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