France wants to boost angel investment by copying UK’s investment schemes

As part of France’s budget for 2024, which was passed last week by the French government without a vote, France plans to create a new tax relief system for angel investments in tech startups. In many ways, France is drawing inspiration from the British tech ecosystem for this change. If you’re an angel investor in the U.K., chances are you’re already quite familiar with the acronyms SEIS and EIS, which mean Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme and Enterprise Investment Scheme. These two tax relief schemes have fostered angel investments in small private companies — generally tech startups — since 1994. In the U.K., if you invest in an early-stage startup, your investment is eligible for a 50% tax break on your income tax, with a limit of £200,000 in investments per year. You may wonder, but what is an early-stage startup, after all? Criteria change every now and then, but right now, an SEIS-compatible company is a British company that is less than three years old, has less than 25 employees and less than £350,000 in gross assets.