Terms and conditions

1. About us and these terms

These terms apply to every service we provide. In these terms, we, us and our mean Christian Brown, a sole trader trading as Solara, of Suite Ra01, 195-197 Wood Street, London E17 3NU, United Kingdom. You can contact us at hello@usesolara.uk or through the contact form on our website.

You and your mean the company that buys a service from us, and the person placing the order on its behalf.

By paying for a service, or by asking us to start work, you agree to these terms. Please read them carefully, especially sections 4, 8, 11 and 12, which limit what we promise and what we are responsible for.

2. Business customers only

Our services are for businesses only. By placing an order you confirm that you are acting for a company, in the course of its business, and not as a consumer. Consumer protection rights that apply only to consumers, including the 14-day cancellation right for consumers, do not apply.

You confirm that the person placing the order has authority to bind the company to these terms.

3. Our services

We provide the services described on our website at the time you order:

• Advance assurance (SEIS, EIS, or SEIS and EIS together): an eligibility review, edits to your pitch deck or business plan where we think they are needed for HMRC, preparing the advance assurance application, the relevant HMRC checklists and a cover letter, submitting the application to HMRC as your agent, and answering HMRC’s questions about it.
• Compliance: preparing and filing one SEIS1 or EIS1 compliance statement for one share issue or funding round, answering HMRC’s questions about it, and preparing SEIS3 or EIS3 certificates for the investors named in that statement.
• The full bundle: SEIS and EIS advance assurance together, plus compliance for one SEIS or one EIS share issue.

Our services do not include, unless we agree otherwise in writing: drafting or amending articles of association, shareholder agreements or subscription documents; issuing shares or filing at Companies House; advising any investor on their own tax position or eligibility for relief; valuations; VCT or SITR applications; more than one compliance statement per compliance service; or reapplying after HMRC refuses an application because of facts that were not disclosed to us.

Each service covers one application for one company. Additional applications, rounds or companies are separate services.

4. No guarantee of HMRC’s decision, and not financial advice

Advance assurance is a discretionary, non-statutory service provided by HMRC. HMRC alone decides whether to give it, how long it takes and whether to accept a compliance statement. Advance assurance is not binding on HMRC and does not guarantee that any investor will receive tax relief.

Except for the money back guarantee in section 8, we do not guarantee any outcome, approval or timescale. Any figures we publish about our success rate or average turnaround describe our past results and are not a promise about your application.

We are not regulated financial advisers, and we do not give investment advice or tax advice to investors. Your investors should take their own advice. You remain responsible for your company’s decisions, including whether, when and how to raise money.

5. Your responsibilities

You agree to:

• give us information and documents that are complete, accurate and not misleading, and tell us straight away if anything changes before HMRC makes its decision or before shares are issued;
• reply to our requests, and to any questions HMRC sends, within 5 working days;
• review and approve every application and statement before we submit it, and sign any agent authorisation HMRC needs;
• make sure you have the right to share any personal data you give us about directors, shareholders and investors, and that you have told them we will receive it; and
• follow the scheme rules after advance assurance or compliance, including how and when you issue shares and use the money raised.

Everything we submit is based on what you tell us. You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide, and for the consequences if it is wrong or incomplete.

6. The eligibility checker

The eligibility checker on our website gives an automated, indicative view based only on your answers and the content of any deck you upload. It is not advice and not a decision by us or by HMRC. A positive result does not mean we will accept your application, and the money back guarantee only applies once you have paid for a service and we have submitted your application.

7. Fees and payment

Our fees are the fixed, one-off fees shown on our website when you order. We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is charged on our fees. Fees are payable in full before we start work.

Bundles are priced as a package. If you have bought a bundle and only part of it is refunded under these terms, the refund for each part is calculated using the separate prices shown on our website at the time you ordered, and never exceeds what you paid for the bundle.

We may change our prices at any time, but changes do not affect services you have already paid for.

8. Money back guarantee

If you have paid for an advance assurance service and HMRC has not given advance assurance within 60 days of the date we submit your application to HMRC, we will refund the fee you paid for that advance assurance service less the reasonable costs we have incurred in relation to your application (for the full bundle, see 8.3), subject to the conditions below.

8.1 How the 60 days work

The 60 days start on the day we submit your application to HMRC, not the day you pay. Any time we or HMRC are waiting for you to provide information, approve a document or answer a question is added on to the 60 days.

The 60-day timer is paused whenever HMRC asks for further information, or asks a question about your application. It stays paused until we have received everything we need from you to answer HMRC in full, and we have sent that answer to HMRC. The timer then carries on from where it stopped, so the days already counted still count. We will tell you by email when the timer is paused and when it restarts.

8.2 When the guarantee does not apply

The guarantee does not apply if HMRC refuses, delays or does not give advance assurance because:

• information you gave us or HMRC was inaccurate, incomplete or misleading, or you did not tell us about something relevant;
• you did not reply to us or to HMRC within 5 working days of a request;
• you did not make the changes to your pitch deck or application that we told you, in writing, were needed;
• your company’s circumstances changed after submission, for example a change of trade, a share issue, new funding, or a change in gross assets or headcount;
• you asked us to submit after we told you, in writing, that we did not think your company qualified;
• HMRC treats the application as speculative, for example because no potential investors have been identified, after we advised you of this;
• you withdraw the application or ask us to stop work; or
• the law, HMRC guidance or HMRC’s practice changes after we submit.

8.3 What is covered

The guarantee covers advance assurance only. It does not cover the compliance service on its own. If you bought the full bundle and the guarantee applies, we will refund the whole bundle price, less the reasonable costs we have incurred in relation to your application, as long as we have not started work on the compliance statement.

Any refund under this section is reduced by the reasonable costs we have incurred in relation to your application, including work already completed and third-party costs. We will provide an itemised statement of the costs deducted from the refund.

8.4 How to claim

Email hello@usesolara.uk within 14 days after the end of the 60-day period. Claims made after that are not covered. We will confirm whether the guarantee applies within 10 working days and, if it does, refund you to the original payment method within 14 days of confirming.

8.5 Your only remedy

A refund under this section is your only remedy if HMRC does not give advance assurance within 60 days. It is the most we will pay in connection with that outcome.

9. Cancelling

Before we start work: you can cancel and get a full refund. We treat work as started once we begin reviewing your documents.

After we start work: you can ask us to stop at any time, but fees are not refundable except under the money back guarantee in section 8.

We may decline or stop work, with a full refund of any fees for work not yet submitted, if we reasonably believe your company does not qualify, if information you have given us appears to be false, or if continuing would mean breaking the law or HMRC’s requirements.

10. Timescales

Any timescales we give, including our average approval time of 2 to 4 weeks after submission, are estimates based on our past experience. HMRC sets its own timescales and we are not responsible for delays caused by HMRC or by you.

11. Our liability to you

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot legally be limited or excluded.

Subject to that:

• we are not liable for any loss of profit, revenue, funding, investment, investors, business, opportunity, goodwill or anticipated savings; any loss of tax relief by you or your investors; any loss caused by HMRC’s decisions or delays; or any indirect or consequential loss, in each case however it arises;
• we are not liable for any loss caused by information or documents you provided being inaccurate or incomplete, or by you not following the scheme rules; and
• our total liability to you, however it arises and whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited to the total fees you paid us for the service concerned.

You agree that these limits are reasonable given the fixed, low fees we charge, and that you can take your own professional advice and insurance if you need more protection.

12. Your responsibility for information you give us

You will compensate us for any reasonable losses, costs and expenses we incur because of a claim by a third party, including an investor or HMRC, arising from information you gave us being false, inaccurate or misleading, or from you breaching these terms.

13. Your materials and ours

Your pitch deck and documents stay yours. You give us permission to use, copy and edit them to provide the services. Once you have paid, you may use any edited deck or document we produce for you in any way you like. Our templates, methods, checklists and software remain ours.

14. Confidentiality and data protection

We keep your information confidential and only share it with HMRC and with the service providers we use to run our business, such as payment, email, storage and AI tools, under appropriate confidentiality terms. We may keep anonymised statistics about our applications and use them to describe our results.

We handle personal data as explained in our privacy policy.

15. Complaints

If you are unhappy, email hello@usesolara.uk. We will acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days and aim to resolve it within 10 working days.

16. General

• Events outside our control. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, including HMRC system outages or backlogs.
• Changes to these terms. We may update these terms. The version in force when you ordered applies to that order.
• Whole agreement. These terms, and the service description on our website when you ordered, are the whole agreement between us. You have not relied on anything else we have said, except as set out here. This does not limit liability for fraud.
• Transfer. We may transfer our rights and obligations to another business. You may not transfer yours without our written consent.
• Third parties. No one other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms.
• Severance. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
• No waiver. If we delay enforcing these terms, we can still enforce them later.

17. Law and courts

These terms, and any dispute about them, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.