On 14 February 2019, one of our directors Nigel Mason spoke with Deb Oxley OBE, chief executive of the Employee Ownership Association ("EOA"), at the annual Jack Fitzpatrick Memorial Lecture in Dublin, organised by IPSA, the Irish Proshare Association. Jack Fitzpatrick was a lifelong advocate...
Zero tax on an employee share plan, the Share Incentive Plan ("SIP") sounds too good to be true. Even the Enterprise Management Incentive ("EMI") only delivers a 10% capital gains tax rate to participants – and that’s after employees have paid something to exercise their...
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...
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...
Mr Hammond’s budget on 29 October didn’t look on the face of it to have very much in the way of excitement for share schemes, but there was certainly food for thought in particular for seekers of Entrepreneurs’ Relief (“ER”). The changes mean that Enterprise...
In businesses the best incentives create behaviours which benefit the company. Would you like to enhance performance, productivity and personnel development whilst by achieving your Company’s strategic plan? Employee ownership across all employees which is implemented correctly and communicated strongly, can really make a difference. We...
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...
On 29 June 2018, the Financial Services and Services Markets Act 2000 (Prospectus and Markets in Financial Instruments) Regulations 2018 No 786 were published. These UK Regulations/Statutory Instruments amend the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (“FSMA 2000”) for the purposes of implementing the new EU...
