Tories promise bigger share options for all

The Conservative Party today announced that if elected it will lift the threshold of employee share options from £30,000 to £100,000 for a business valued at up to £100m.

According to Conservative shadow economic secretary Howard Flight, the government's Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) scheme qualification threshold of £15m is a disincentive for growth. He said: "Britain needs to increase the number of talented executives working for new ventures and promoting commercially viable new business plans. Smaller firms, which cannot afford to pay high salaries to attract experienced executives, need to be able to offer attractive share option scheme incentives." However John Whiting a tax partner from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted the Labour government would pre-empt the opposition. He said "I wouldn't be surprised to see the £15m figure lifted in next weeks budget, although not as high as £100m." Speaking on silicon.com's CFO Clinic, lawyer David Cohen, partner at Norton Rose, said the EMI scheme was primarily set up to focus on high-tech companies. He said: "It can mean you hold the options and sell the shares over a four year period and your tax rate, instead of being 40 per cent, will come down to 10 per cent. "The whole point from the companies point of view is they're buying loyalty and a commitment to them." However, according to Flight, of the 20,000 companies which qualify, only 100 have taken up the EMI scheme.