Share schemes

Employees are key to any business and employee share incentive schemes can be a good way for a company to attract, incentivise, reward and retain employees. Attract new talent Retain existing talent Encourage employees to grow the business Remunerate employees without the cash cost of bonuses/salary increases Potential exit planning

Share incentive schemes can be as flexible and also as complicated as a company may wish to make them and can include a variety of conditions/criteria so as to meet the needs of a business whilst also being a powerful tool to attract, retain, motivate and reward staff.

Structured correctly, these awards can, in many cases, be achieved in a tax efficient manner.

Our Shares Scheme team will be able to guide you through the design and implementation of your employee share incentive scheme, and the myriad of tax legislation surrounding these potentially tax efficient methods of employee incentivisation.

Where relevant, the Menzies Valuations Team can assist with company valuations associated with employee share incentive schemes and agreeing such valuations with HM Revenue & Customs where this is possible.

In the UK, employee share incentive schemes fall into two general camps – those with UK tax advantages and those with no UK tax advantages. Links to further information regarding some of these schemes are below.

Employee Share Options:

• Tax advantaged – Enterprise Management Incentive Scheme (EMI)
• Tax advantaged – Company Share Option Plan (CSOP)
• Tax advantaged – Save As You Earn Option Plan (SAYE)
• Non tax advantaged – “unapproved” share option plan menzies.co.uk

Employee Share Plans:

• Share Incentive Plans (SIP) – all employees
• Growth shares
• Nil paid and Partly paid shares
• Other Phantom Share Schemes