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Topical discussions about employee ownership and employee share plans

Companies with share plans and their advisors are likely to be somewhat relieved about the impact of Rachel Reeves’ budget on employee share schemes.  Although from a tax perspective the changes aren’t particularly helpful, they’re not devastating and still mean that well designed share plans...

On Budget Day, the government published its response to a recent consultation on Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) and Employee Benefit Trusts (EBTs), as well as amending legislation. RM2 is delighted to say that the changes will make little or no difference to our approach to establishing...

What is the EMI independence test? In order to qualify for the tax advantaged Enterprise Management Incentive scheme (EMI), a company must be “independent”.  Broadly speaking, this means the company must not be under the control of another company.  If the company does not meet or...

Private company owners frequently ask what percentage of share capital they should use in their employee share plan.  In other words, how much dilution is reasonable for shareholders to accept. The truth is, there’s no right answer to this.  But here are some pointers to help...

You’re busy building and growing a business, so these things are often deprioritised, forgotten or overlooked while you’re deep in product development, GTM strategy, etc. Or you decide to look each other in the eye and agree you’re all in it for the long haul....

Employers who have awarded shares or options to their employees have an annual obligation to report any notifiable events that occurred in relation to Employment Related Securities (ERS), often known as a share scheme return.  The absolute deadline for making the share scheme return via...

Before looking at the important differences between Share Incentive Plan (SIP) and Save As You Earn (SAYE), we need to first understand the reason they were created and why the government is currently considering evidence of their effectiveness.   The UK government offers four different tax-advantaged employee...

If you’re just starting to think about rewarding employees in your company with shares, it can be difficult to decide what’s the best plan for you.  There are a variety of plans to choose from.  Some plans are tax efficient, and you can tailor many...

If you’re new to share plans, you’re probably going to be coming up against some pretty horrible jargon.  Here’s a quick and dirty guide to some of the terms you’ll come across at the outset of your employee share plan journey – what they mean and...

By the time this blog lands, it seems likely that the UK will have a new government. It's natural to wonder if this will mean a big change for employee share plans and employee share ownership generally. However, whether we’ve woken up on Friday 5th...

This year sees the tenth anniversary of the introduction of the Employee Ownership Trust. A decade on, over 1,000 companies in the UK have seized the opportunity to make the jump to employee ownership using this model. To celebrate Employee Ownership Day 2024, RM2 has identified...

HMRC have taken their time before publishing tax-advantaged employee share scheme (ESS) statistics for the tax year 2022 (at the end of May 2024).  This may be because they had discovered data processing errors in the years from 2015 to 2021.  In fact, HMRC have...