Summary

• Does your organisation operate a share issue policy for its employees?
• How often are shares available to employees, irrespective of the option offered?
• What are the rules for offering shares to employees? Are they offered as a purchase option, or are they offered as part of an employees package? At what level are the shares offered?
• If shares are offered as a purchase option, does your organisation require that these periodic issues be recorded for each employee that takes up this offer?
• How are purchase option shares paid for? Is the payment deducted from the employee’s wages, or is there some other method of payment?
• Where shares are offered as part of an employee’s remuneration package, what is the eligibility criteria? What determines whether a particular employee is eligible? For example, position or service?
• How is the quantity of shares offered determined for those employees that are eligible?
• Does your organisation operate a share issue scheme for those employees eligible for this type of benefit?
• Does the scheme have an element of periodicity? Is it based on a defined period of time, and is it regularly available?
• Can an employee be eligible for a scheme and yet receive an offer as part of the scheme issue? For example, the scheme is issued for a group of employees but one individual is not offered shares as part of this particular issue?
• Can an employee decline to accept shares that are offered, and what impact does this have on the employee’s overall package value? Is the employee’s total remuneration retained with an adjustment to some component of the package to retain the overall package value?
• Are share issues considered by your organisation to be part of the ‘at risk’ element of a remuneration package?
• Does your organisation determine the benefit value to an employee of the shares that are offered as part of the employee’s package?
• Does your organisation calculate the Fringe Benefit Tax that is attracted as a result of an employee receiving shares as part of their remuneration package?