Tax advantaged share schemes record a ten-year high

Government figures relating to share schemes for the year ending 2020 mark some head-turning trends for industry-watchers. See tinyurl.com/hmrcssstat.

Unsurprisingly the main headline of the report focused on the amount of financial relief achieved over the course of the year. Impressively these business-boosting schemes achieved a combined saving of £530m in income tax relief and £340m in National Insurance contributions.

Another major finding is that enterprise management incentives (EMI) have become the largest contributor to the total cost of share scheme tax relief. The report also confirms EMI as the UK’s most popular scheme with more employees signed up to this scheme than any other option.

Finally there has been another overall increase in companies adopting share schemes.

At the close of the tax year ending 2020 15 340 companies were enrolled on a scheme of some variety. These figures might seem...