Changes to the employment related securities (ERS) year-end tax returns, Company Share Option Plan (CSOP) limit and share class and update on ERS guidance – ERS Bulletin 47

On 19th January 2023, HMRC published the Employment Related Securities Bulletin 47.

The main contents of the Bulletin are:

• Changes to the ERS year-end return template
• Changes to the CSOP limit and share class restrictions
• Update of the ERS guidance

Changes to the ERS year-end return template

HMRC has announced that they will be making some minor changes to the ERS year-end return template, effective 6 April 2023 to improve the quality of the data that they receive. In this regard, HMRC will publish template guidance and a technical note sometime this month. The changes should not affect employers who provide accurate entries for all data fields in the returns.

The main changes are:

• Mandatory completion of the ‘PAYE reference of the employer’ field
• Mandatory completion of the ‘Is PAYE operated Y/N’ field
• Mandatory completion of the national insurance number field
• Change to the ERS end of year return templates column title heading asking for an HMRC valuation reference

Changes to the CSOP limit and share class

On 23 September 2022, it was announced that from 6 April 2023, the CSOP individual limit will be increased from £30,000 to £60,000 and that the share class restriction will be removed (read more here). HMRC will provide further guidelines in this regard.

Update of the ERS guidance

HMRC has enhanced its guidance at ‘Tell HMRC about your Employment Related Securities (ERS) schemes’ to clarify when and how to:

• register for the ERS service
• register a new ERS scheme
• cease an ERS scheme.

For more information, please contact JD Ghosh, Stuart James and Paul Norris.

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