Despite the unfortunate connotations with the “John Major” political era, as Parliament has been dissolved, we felt it was a good time to go “back to basics”, and explore the fundamental benefits, potential pitfalls, and overall reasoning behind establishing an employee share scheme.What is an...
When you’re setting up a share scheme for employees, one of the first questions you’ll want to ask is whether you should offer direct shares or share options. What are the key differences between shares and options? A quick summary is set out below: A Share gives...
Background RM2 is an employee owned consultancy specialising in the design, implementation and administration of all types of employee share plan arrangements. Our clients include private companies and those listed on AIM or similar markets. Form more information please visit our website at www.rm2.co.uk. We...
When we begin to speak with clients about employee share plans, one of the questions we are consistently asked is, “what size should the award be”? This is, of course, an extremely important question, but unfortunately not one which is necessarily very simple to answer. There are...
The directors and staff of RM2 are delighted to report that, following a full quality audit, we have retained our ISO 9001:2015 accreditation in quality management and system processes. ISO 9001:2015 is the leading internationally recognised quality standard for business management. Continually meeting the demanding requirements of...
Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) options remain the most popular share option scheme for SMEs because of their super-flexibility and tax efficiency.But not all companies can use EMI. If your company employs 250 or more full time employees, or has gross assets exceeding £30m, or...
Our operations team at RM2 can put its collective feet up – all 150 returns have been filed in good time for our clients’ share plans. If you’ve not filed your returns yet for the 2018/19 tax year, you have until 6th July 2019. If you...
There has been a slew of entrepreneurs’ relief (ER) cases lately as ER comes under increasing scrutiny in view of the tax lost to HM Treasury. (To recap, ER is a capital gains tax relief which taxes an individual’s qualifying total lifetime gains of £10m...
Taxation of share options In 2003, employment related shares and share options were made subject to wide sweeping reforms, specifically introduced to address tax avoidance. One such change was the introduction of a law that stated where an option to acquire shares is made available by...
The recent case of Nosworthy v Instinctif Partners Ltd (2019) UKEAT/0100/18 is not strictly speaking a case regarding employee share schemes but a couple of the themes are pertinent to our arena, particularly where employees have acquired shares following the exercise of share options, or...
On the occasion of its 25th birthday, RM2, the market leading employee share schemes and EOT consulting business, is converting to full employee ownership as the present owners transfer their entire shareholding to an Employee Ownership Trust. Since 1994, RM2 has helped private companies set up...
Approaching the end of the tax year in the world of share plans is a bit like Christmas, there are 2 types of shopper, those who buy their presents in good time, and those who rush out on Christmas Eve. RM2 are definatley in the former...
Discretionary share schemes Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) and Company Share Option Plan (CSOP) options are popular choices for companies who want to operate their share option arrangements flexibly. Both plans allow the directors an element of choice and discretion in key areas: Who gets to benefit ...
Each year the Employment Related Securities (“ERS”) service of HMRC issues penalties for share scheme returns not filed by the deadline date of 6th July. HMRC released the following statistics on the number of penalties issued for 2017/2018 tax year: 9,253 first penalties issued (£100...
On 28th November 2018, the Investment Association (“IA”) published a revised version of its principles of remuneration. The main changes are: Firstly, a recommendation of a minimum two-year period during which executives are required to hold their shares post any termination of their employment that may have...
