Solutions

Approved by HMRC, these schemes provide an incentive to the wider workforce and might be used to reward junior employees in conjunction with a separate scheme for key management. 

A SIP scheme enables employers to grant a modest (£3,000 per year) gift of free shares to each employee free of tax, providing all eligible employees are included.  Employees may then buy further shares and these may be matched with further free shares from the employer, again tax-free. 

An SAYE plan allows options to be grated over shares exercisable in 3 or 5 years.  In the meantime an employee contributes a monthly amount of up to £250 to fund the purchase of the shares.  There is no initial taxation and any growth is subject to capital gains tax not Income Tax. 

A SIP must be administered through a UK-resident trust whilst an SAYE plan may also benefit from being run as a trust-based scheme.