Employee Share Schemes

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and Incentive Plans

Retaining high performing employees can be key to ensuring the long-term success and growth of a business. Implementing an employee share schemes (ESS) or incentive plan can be an effective means by which businesses can motivate and maintain valued employees.  

ESS provide high performing employees with the ability to acquire equity in your company through the acquisition of discounted shares now or in the future. However, the qualifying requirements for ESS may, particularly for companies in the Small to Medium Enterprise market, mean they are not the best solution to incentivize staff. In these cases, tailored incentive plans can instead be used.

Whether adopting an ESS or an incentive plan, benefits will be seen by employers as a result of their key employees being motivated to stay with the firm and drive the business’ success. They also benefit employees by offering tax effective means of gaining financial rewards from the current and future success of the business.

The Business Law team at Sladen Legal are dedicated to working with clients to help develop employee share schemes or incentive plans that enable businesses to grow and prosper. Whether you are a small business, a privately held Australian enterprise or a public entity, we will work closely with you to develop tailored schemes or plans that suit your needs, encourage your key staff to stay with the company and ultimately inspire the evolution and development of your business.  

We can assist with:

  • Providing advice on the most ideal model for your business, whether that be as ESS or an incentive plan.

  • Advising on the compliance requirements of ESS and incentive plans.

  • Preparation of ESS documentation including letters of offer, information documents for employees, application forms, salary sacrifice agreements (if applicable) and notices of entitlements.

  • Preparation of relevant incentive plan documentation including shareholder agreements and Corporations Law compliance documents.

  • Tax dispute advice services including responding to ATO reviews and audits of ESS or incentive plan arrangements, preparation of position papers and objecting to taxation decisions.

ESS & Incentive Plan News