Employee Share Schemes consultation

Given the impact of the COVID pandemic and the uncertain times that lay ahead, each and every day businesses are adjusting to the ‘new world’ economy and are finding ways to provide security to their employees, to increase productivity and to grow their businesses. In this context, the Australian Investment Council is supportive of the ESS measures as they play an important role in remunerating and incentivising staff, particularly in start-ups, scale-ups and other high growth companies.

ESS schemes can be an important component of staff remuneration in companies within the innovation ecosystem who are often faced with limited resources during their early stages of growth, despite the potential to grow into large and sustainable businesses. While reforms in this area over recent years have significantly improved the ESS regime, the Council believes there are still opportunities to further enhance how these schemes operate and how companies are able to remunerate their staff. We recognise there is further work to be done to align Australia with comparable jurisdictions as outlined in the Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue’s report − Owning a Share of Your Work: Tax Treatment of Employee Share Schemes − tabled in the Parliament on Monday, 23 August 2021.

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