There wasn’t a great deal in the Chancellor George Osborne’s Autumn Statement to do with employee share schemes that we hadn’t heard about already.

However, there was one unexpected gift – an increase in the limits on the contributions that can be made to SAYE (Sharesave) schemes and share incentive plans (SIPs).  That said, for SAYE the boost is long-overdue, as the limit hasn’t been increased since 1991 and for SIPs, the percentage increase isn’t enough to balance inflation since 2000 when SIPs were introduced.  So the gift was very much on the Scrooge side.

For more detail on the Government’s announcements in the area of share schemes, see our alert.