EIS + non taxpayers

The capital gains from an EIS investment after 3 years are tax free. It is useful to have the paperwork which proves your shares were acquired as qualifying holdings as part of the scheme, when you get those gains in the future, so you can support the non-payment of CGT on the proceeds (or taking income loss relief on the losses) if challenged. So, don't throw the paperwork away until several years after your disposal of the assets.

However, if you are not going to claim any income tax relief as a result of the purchase (because you do not have any income tax available to be relieved in current year or prior year) and you are not trying to claim deferral of CGT by using capital proceeds of a previous investment to roll into the new EIS investments, it seems then there is nothing to actually 'claim' now.

As I understand it, your relief from gains taxes on disposal only kicks in after you've had the qualifying investment 3 years (i.e. 3 years after the paperwork says that the both the investment had been made and the company was actually qualifying based on its activities). Usually the start point would be flagged to HMRC when you provide them with the details in your tax return when doing your income tax relief or CGT deferral claim. I'm not sure that you literally have to provide them with the details even if you don't want to claim those things, just to 'start the clock' on the 3 years.

I assume you don't have to claim now, given you have paperwork that says you made a qualifying purchase that HMRC accepted as qualifying, but have never been in the situation of making an EIS or VCT investment and *not* wanting to make any claim at the start. You could check with HMRC. Being able to claim that stuff is, for a lot of people, a key thing that can make the investment a decent risk/return prospect. Generally others who can't get any upfront relief are more wary unless they have loads of capital wealth that they simply can't deploy in other tax-efficient wrappers, or it's an employment related investment etc.