Late on Friday, 26 June 2020, with little fanfare, the Chancellor of the Exchequer tabled a new clause for inclusion in the Finance Bill 2020 (FB 2020) during its Report stage in the House of Commons. It addresses a key concern around furloughed employees who hold enterprise management incentive (EMI) options (as discussed previously on … Continue Reading
Since 6 April 2018 companies have been unable to grant new EMI options, because the existing EU state aid approval expired without fresh approval having been received. So there has been much excitement today at the news that the EU Commission has now given state aid approval, and companies can now grant new EMI options. … Continue Reading
The vagaries of EU State Aid approvals probably pass most of us by. However, they have come centre stage for many SMEs with HMRC’s announcement that it is not expected that an extension to the UK’s existing State Aid approval for EMI options will be granted before 6th April, when the current approval expires. HMRC … Continue Reading
Just a quick reminder that the deadline for making annual returns for UK share schemes relating to the 2015/2016 tax year is 6 July 2016. For tax-advantaged share schemes: share incentive plans (otherwise known as SIPs); company share option plans (CSOPs); savings-related share option schemes (SAYE/Sharesave); and Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI), if a new scheme … Continue Reading
Following on from our earlier blog post predicting that companies might have issues when using the new online service for registering employee share plans with HMRC, it appears that problems are indeed emerging. Despite the looming deadline of 6 July, we hear anecdotal reports that so far only about 25% of plans have been registered. In … Continue Reading
In several posts last year, we charted the development of the new HMRC rules for the online registering, self-certifying and making of annual returns for share plans, and indeed all arrangements under which employees receive shares. Now the dust has settled, the teething troubles have been ironed out and the templates for the new “end-of-year” returns … Continue Reading
HMRC has recently released template forms and guidance notes for making online annual returns for employee share plans, plus a form for notifying the grant of Enterprise Management Incentive options online (the former paper form EMI1). There are dire warnings that the templates must not be tinkered with in any way, otherwise they will be … Continue Reading
The best advice to an unquoted company granting EMI options has always been to agree the value of a share with HMRC shortly before grant. This gives certainty: the company will know that it isn’t breaching the £3 million limit on the value of EMI options it can grant; the option holder can be comfortable knowing that all … Continue Reading
As trailed in our previous post, HMRC has just published the FAQs about its new online service for share plans. It’s clear that it’s very much do-it-yourself. If you want confirmation that your registration of a share plan or notification of an EMI option grant was successful, make sure you print and save a copy of … Continue Reading
Just a quick reminder that if you have any forms relating to the notification of the grant of EMI options (on HMRC Form EMI1) to file, you should ensure that you get them to the Revenue by 5 April 2014 – so effectively by Friday of this week. After this, HMRC will no longer accept paper … Continue Reading
