What are ESOPS , and why your Employer issue them ?

An Employee Stock Option (ESOP) Plan is when the company offers its shares to the employees. An ESOP is nothing but an option to buy the company's share at a certain price. This could either be at the market price (price of the share currently listed on the stock exchange), or at a preferential price (price lower than the current market price). If the firm has not yet gone public (shares are not listed on any stock exchange), it could be at whatever price the management fixes.

2. Why your Employer offer an ESOP to you?

Retention is the pre-dominant objective. The ESOP trend started somewhere in the late 1990s, when we also saw the emergence of new entrepreneurs and many venture-funded companies. In many cases, there were also management buyouts. Essentially, the investors hired key executives and in order to get them equity in the company, ESOP was the ideal way, wherein they did not put in money initially but they did get options that were at a discount. So they could get shares in the company at a lower price than the investors. For established companies, retention is the main objective and for start-ups it is a way to get a management team in place. It is also something like a joining bonus in case the employee who joins had stock options in his previous company. You have to compensate him, because he foregoes the gains he made there. Just like you match the salary, you also match the stock options.

Typically, retention works where the unvested options are more than the vested options. Employees should have something to look forward to. If ESOP is like a one-time grant, after two years when the options vest, there is nothing that the employee will look forward to. Companies offer their employees shares because it is considered that having a stake in the company would increase loyalty and motivation substantially.

What are the tax implications of ESOPs?

FBT as a tax is on the company, so the responsibility is on the company to pay but specific with ESOPs, the law also gives authority to the company to pass it on. So in our experience almost 100% of the companies have passed on the tax impact to their employees. Before FBT came in, the ESOP gains were virtually tax-free. The kind of gains employees were making was very noticeable, so the tax was long overdue. But the real impact of FBT is much less than 33%