There are a few countries that require special annual reports for share plan transactions (in addition to regular annual payroll reports). Australia and the UK are among these countries and are both on a fiscal year that differs from the calendar year. The UK tax year ended on April 5 and the Australian tax year will end on June 30.
- The UK Annual Share Plan Return (formerly known as Form 35, for tax-qualified awards, and Form 42, for non tax-qualified awards) is due to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (“HMRC”) by July 6.
- The Australian Employee Share Scheme (ESS) Return must be filed with the Australian Tax Office by August 14. In addition, companies are required to provide their Australian employees with ESS statements by July 14.
Both returns (and the Australian ESS statements) can take a while to prepare (especially if companies need to report transactions for mobile employees and/or awards that were adjusted in a corporate transaction) and will need to be submitted electronically.
Please see our client alerts for Australia and the UK for more information on how to prepare the returns and make the submission. We are aware that the HMRC website was affected by an outage during the month of May, so companies may have less time than normal to make the UK submission.
Our Sydney and London offices are available to assist with the preparation and submission of the returns.
