Meeting your needs & helping you build your business
Helping you take control of your day-to-day finances
Informing your decisions with management reporting
Understand your business performance with the support of experts.
Helping you appoint the people you trust to look after your best interests
Helping you comply, and providing practical advice
Providing peace of mind, with precision
Meeting the specific requirements of your sector
Manage your accounts with Sage’s upgraded software package
Interact with your data online, anytime, anywhere
Cloud-based accounting to improve efficiency and flexibility
The switch towards digital services and cloud technology
Simplifying complex staff pay, tax and HR requirements
Third-party apps for Xero and QuickBooks
Ongoing support for your accountancy software package
Ensuring you have the right papers for the right people
Helping your business through a difficult and emotional process
Advice and assistance through everyday HR processes and procedures
Helping owners and managers to be prepared
Assisting and defending claims in the employment tribunal
Helping couples through separation or divorce
Advising on commercial disagreements
Making sense of the family law process
Helping you get the right support after an accident
Estimating what your business is worth
Reliable recovery advice when you need it most
Giving you practical advice and answers
Helping achieve a positive outcome
Details of fees and expenses
Reassuring help through insolvency or financial difficulty
Escalate accountancy led commercial dispute resolution
Working with you to entering the UK market
Giving you the tools to thrive in the UK market
Helping you consider the UK tax implications
Supporting your success through specialist offshore services
Helping you thrive in the region
Helping you prosper in our country
Ensuring you benefit from the best international rates
Creating opportunities through international connections
Helping you enter new markets safely and profitably
Helping reduce your administrative burden
Ensuring you maintain a healthy cash flow
Adding the right skills to your workforce
Supporting you to do the best for your staff
Saving you time; ensuring compliance, accuracy and efficiency
Providing the full range of support & services you need
Helping you navigate all the options
Ensuring your way of life is always as you want it
Helping you look forward to the future
Making the most of your investments
Helping you do more than comply with the regulations
Existing clients can login to our portals here
Helping you support your family at a difficult time
Enabling you to deal with a deceased's estate
Strengthen your case for securing growth capital on the right terms
Ensure new markets add value to your business
Understand your opportunity to expand abroad
Connecting the right parties
Helping you make better decisions
Pick the right growth strategies
Setting the right direction for your business
Helping you understand what your business is worth
Helping you develop a clear plan and put it into action
Helping you get the facts when you acquire a business
Planning how to expand and improve
Helping you plan and raise finance for transferring a business
Advising you on developing or growing your business by teaming up with others
Helping ambitious businesses and forward-thinking funders
Angel and crowd funding for extraordinary entrepreneurs
Helping scalable early-stage businesses thrive
Supporting you through the sales process, and helping you achieve the best value
Helping you find the right funding structure
Transferring business control to the employees
Ensuring you comply with regulations and helping you manage your VAT
Get an instant estimate
Helping your international business assess arms-length relationships and tax risks
Helping you make the most of the tax incentives available to you
Making sense of your UK personal tax reporting, and ensuring you pay the right amount.
Reducing the impact of a current or future tax investigation
Minimising your risk with the best possible representation
Thinking ahead to help you structure your transactions effectively
Pensions & employer services » Employee share schemes
The plan must be made available to all employees, but you can set a qualifying period of up to 18 months. You can vary the value of the free shares you give to each employee on the basis of remuneration, length of service, hours worked, or performance.
Employees taking part must not have a material interest in the company (that is, owning or controlling more than 25% of its ordinary share capital). This also applies to the preceding 12 months.
For free and matching shares, employees are contractually bound to keep them in the plan for between three and five years. The shares can be dividend shares, and you can choose to make dividend reinvestment compulsory or optional. Total dividend reinvestment for any participant must not exceed £1,500 in a tax year. The holding period for dividend shares is three years.
Shares have to come out of the plan when employees leave their job. You can decide whether employees lose their free or matching shares if they leave within three years, and whether employees who leave have to sell their shares.
Mark BoonLa Playa
Important employment law and payroll changes in 2022
If they keep them for three years, they pay income tax and national insurance on the initial value of the shares; any increase in value will be tax-free.
Employees who keep their shares in the plan until they sell don’t have to pay Capital Gains Tax. If they take them out and sell later, they pay Capital Gains Tax only on any increase in value after the shares came out of the plan.
The options are normally free from income tax and national insurance charges when they’re granted and exercised. Certain trades are excluded from EMI options, taking into account Company Share Option Plan (CSOP) options also granted to them, with a total market value of more than £120,000 at the date of the grant.
Employees are granted options at a discount of up to 20% at the start of the savings contract. Monthly amounts of between £5 and £250 for up to five years are deducted from pay, under a certified save as you earn (SAYE) contract with a bank or building society.
At the end of the savings contract, a tax-free bonus is payable. Employees use the proceeds of the savings contract, including the bonus, if they want to exercise the option, normally after three, five or seven years. If they do not, the proceeds are repaid in cash, tax-free. There is no tax or national insurance charged on the discount or on the gain made when the option is exercised.
Employees are granted options to acquire shares at the market price at the time of the grant. These can be worth up to £30,000 at any one time. There’s no tax or national insurance to pay on the gain made when the option is exercised, as long as the options are held for at least three years – unless participation ends through disability, redundancy or retirement.
These are subject to the general rules that employees have to pay income tax under Schedule E, and national insurance when they exercise a share option because of their employment (that is, they receive shares free or cheaply).
Get in touch.
Call us for free or submit your enquiry online
Call us on 0800 434 6460
Services that keep you on track, in charge and at ease.
Back to top