Every time your company issues a new grant as part of your EMI scheme, you need to notify HMRC through an EMI notification. If you’ve used Capdesk before, you probably know by now that the platform can generate and automatically fill out an EMI notification for you. If not, take a brief look at our blogpost on that and come right back!

Whether you’ve had an EMI scheme for a while, or just started setting one up, making EMI notifications for HMRC is always one of those tasks that take up more time than you’d like. This process requires you to either manually enter all of the grant recipient’s and issued shares’ details on the HMRC website, or to upload a spreadsheet of your own where you’ve been keeping track of this information.

“Lawyers will tell you it’s about incentivisation, accountants will tell you it’s about making sure people stay as long as possible, but for me it’s actually about giving back to the team who are giving us precious years of their lives.”

If you’ve set up an employee share plan or are considering doing so, you’ve probably read plenty about the topic, including several contributing articles in Forbes. One of those in particular, argues categorically against offering equity to employees. However, we think its author only tells half the truth about employee equity.

A shareholder register is a common requirement for private companies in numerous countries, including but not limited to the UK, the US, and Denmark. Countries such as Sweden, Australia, and Finland keep an equivalent share register. The register consisting of a list of the company's shareholders, which was historically kept in a loose-leaf or bound book. Even today though, newly formed companies continue to use and manually update a hard-copy, despite the electronic version often being easier to maintain and just as acceptable from a legal perspective.

Nokia is one of the many organisations who believe in the potential of employee share plans. We caught up with Lisa West, Program Manager Long Term Incentives at Nokia, to talk advantages and pitfalls of ESPPs, how she sees the future of employee ownership, and 'Share in Success' - the employee share plan that won Nokia an ESOP Centre award for 'Best All-Employee International Share Plan' in 2017.

Allotting new shares is a common way for a company to increase its share capital, providing funds for expansions or advancements of the business.

Capdesk now supports investments via investment vehicles, such as certain forms of fund, trust or nominee setups.

Once you’ve found your investors, you think all the hard work is done and the money will be in the bank within hours. It ought to be like that, but reality is, however, that the fundraising process is often surprisingly lengthy and costly. The primary reason for this is that there is no standardised process for completing a funding round. Most funding rounds are done manually - with each lawyer or fundraising platform doing it differently. On Capdesk you won’t get any help finding the right investors for your round. But we strive to streamline all the boring paperwork, which really shouldn’t be costly.

There are numerous schemes and plans out there to attract and incentivise employees, and more are certain to see the light of day. Some have tax advantages, such as EMI and CSOP. Others, such as unapproved options, do not, but are also less limited by legislative requirements.