In time honoured tradition, we hereby stick out our necks and make five bold predictions for what might happen in our world of employee share ownership in 2019. Employee Ownership Trusts (“EOT”) will graduate from niche to mainstream, five years after their introduction in the...
The big story of the year has been the increasing number of companies converting to employee ownership by selling to an employee ownership trust (“EOT”). Here’s a run down of what went down this year in the world of employee share schemes and employee ownership: January: Trust...
A recent case about entrepreneurs’ relief is jammed with tedious legal jargon about equitable remedies and the like. Luckily, most of the salient points in Dieno George v HMRC ([2018] UKFTT 0509 (TC)) have already been covered by a number of the greatest 80s popular...
Recently (in the context of tax legislation) we published a blog on a couple who were able to benefit from entrepreneurs’ relief because their preference shares (with a fixed rate dividend of zero) were deemed to be part of the company’s ordinary share capital. “Ordinary share capital”...
What does the Labour Party’s announcement on “inclusive ownership funds” mean for employee ownership? At the moment, there’s not a huge amount of detail about Labour’s recently announced policy for 10% of shares in larger companies to be awarded to employees, with additional employee representation on...
If you’re just starting to think about putting in place a share scheme for employees, such as an Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI), a good starting point is our checklist . We’ve published some more detailed blogs on Step 1 (design questions) and Step 2 (how...
The law may be an ass but when it comes to employee share schemes, there are certain legal requirements that company directors, in particular, need to know about. Probably the biggest practical risk is that the share option arrangements may be questioned at a later...
The First Tier Tribunal has ruled in the Esprit Logistics Management Ltd and others v HMRC [2018] case that director loan accounts written off were taxable as employment income of the directors, and subject to PAYE and NIC, rather than taxed as dividends where a...
Employee ownership, and in particular Enterprise Management Incentive schemes (EMI) are at their most popular level ever. This is according to the latest HMRC statistics published in July. Key stats for EMI schemes: Total EMI schemes increased to 10,350 (up 16% on the previous year); Companies...
Today we received an email from HMRC. Specifically, an email agreeing a valuation of a company for an Enterprise Management Incentive ("EMI")scheme. What’s the big deal? For decades, agreeing valuations with HMRC for employee share schemes has been a grind of hand written forms, heaps...
If you’re running an employee share scheme, it’s obvious that it extends to employees. However, is it always obvious who your employees actually are? If you’re using a tax advantaged share scheme, like the Enterprise Management Incentive Scheme (EMI) or Company Share Option Plan (CSOP), you...
If you’re running a share plan for employees, you must submit your annual share scheme return on HMRC’s online system by 6 July 2018. If you don’t, fines will likely apply.HMRC are not known for accepting excuses for late filing. Here are some...
Share plans talk in the last few weeks has focused on Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) options – with relief all round when EU state aid was reconfirmed for this tax advantaged share option plan. The EMI scheme is the best employee share option plan in terms...
We’ve published a helpful checklist to set out some key steps to getting your share plan right. Step 1 - It's all about planning (see our previous blog "Your share plan - get the first step right"). Step 2 - Working how much to give away under...
Author: Nigel Mason Performance targets are a common feature of share option awards, granted under plans such as the Enterprise Management Incentive Plan (EMI) but are they really necessary? That might be a controversial question, especially for companies in sectors with a strong culture of performance...
