Finally, HM Revenue & Customs have decided to try to turn Entrepreneurs’ relief into a “bad” relief. Finance Bill 2020 potentially changes the name of the relief from "entrepreneurs' relief" to "business asset disposal relief" with effect from the tax year 2020-21 (i.e. 5 April 2020)....

In view of the ongoing Coronavirus crisis, please see below some practical tips and guidance for trustees of businesses owned by employee ownership trusts (EOT). Trustee duties With the expected economic chaos arising from the Coronavirus crisis it is important to recap the duties and responsibilities of...

RM2 is open for business, although we are following the guidance issued by Public Health England, which can be found using the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coronavi...

Entrepreneurs Relief (“ER”) and Enterprise Management Incentives Clearly, the Treasury have finally had enough of the fact that ER primarily benefited a small number of very affluent taxpayers and, according to the government, has done little to generate additional entrepreneurial activity. Accordingly, they have slashed the...

Members of the Employee Ownership Association recently attended an inspiring talk by Naomi Climer CBE, Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work (IFoW) at the annual Robert Oakeshott lecture, hosted by Cass Business School.Naomi’s lecture looked at the impact of automation and AI...

We're often contacted by private company owners who are keen to implement employee share plans for their employees quickly. They've heard about the positives – employee commitment, improvement in productivity – and for some plans like the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) and Share Incentive Plan...

What is an Employee Share Plan Return?All employee share schemes need to be registered with HMRC. An employee share plan return is the annual process of notifying HMRC of awards granted, lapsed & exercised and confirming if any alterations have been made to key feature...

If you run a private company, or your company isn’t listed on the main market, you are probably blissfully happy that you don’t have to “comply or explain” in accordance with the UK Corporate Governance Code. The latest version produced by the Financial Reporting Council...

From time to time, we get requests from companies who’ve established, or started to establish, a share plan for employees, only to get stuck on the nitty gritty of making the awards, or managing the scheme afterwards. Employee share plans can range in complexity but whatever...

Last year we made some predictions about share plans which, looking back, were on the whole pretty accurate. The number of Employee Ownership transactions in 2019 more than doubled from the 2018 level and is increasingly becoming a “must-consider” option for owner managers looking for...

The year in review:   Another great year for employee ownership as Employee Ownership Trusts started moving into the mainstream. For RM2, our biggest news was that we joined the increasing number of companies that are owned by their employees! January: January is trusts and estates tax returns...

If the Labour Party wins the election, their manifesto has promised the removal of entrepreneurs’ relief (ER), which provides a 10% capital gains tax (CGT) rate on the sale of shares in certain circumstances. (It’s probably worth nothing that the Treasury is already grumbling...

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...

Fast growing entrepreneurial business that implement Enterprise Management Incentive (“EMI”) share options are very frequently the same businesses looking for external funding from venture capitalists (“VC”), or seeking investment from individuals under the tax-advantaged Enterprise Investment Scheme (“EIS”). But how do these work together? Here are...