Taxation of employee stock options in focus at the Swedish Entrepreneurship Summit

Once a year, the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum compiles and presents research regarding entrepreneurship relevant in the context of forthcoming legislation and which will impact the business community. The Incentive Committee recently presented its proposal for taxation of a new type of employee stock option. The business community’s representatives on the Committee are positive towards the proposal but in the media and in subsequent debates, it has received strong criticism.

At the conference, held in Malmö, Rune Andersson, Mellby Gård, and the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Southern Sweden, Nicolas Hassbjer of Tequity AB, joined in the criticism. – Too limited. Do it over and do it right, was Rune’s challenge. The proposal is now in the consultation process until August. Read more in our previous blog post “Qualified employee stock options in the proposal from the Committee reviewing the tax treatment of incentive schemesOther questions and information”.

Other discussed areas:

• Small and large companies are dependent on each other if R&D and knowledge is to spread to new, successful companies. This becomes most obvious outside the Stockholm Region.
• Internationalisation. Mikael Blomkvist, founder of Roxtec AB, now works with new start-ups. He spends approximately one week a month in Silicon Valley just to obtain a better understanding of how to market his new companies.
• Expert tax. In addition to competitive capital and corporate taxes, experience shows that the possibilities of obtaining lower tax on foreign experts, both within the company and in terms of research, must be improved.
• Level of productivity, something that is often lower in companies outside the Stockholm Region. This is an important question to bring to the fore and one with which the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Southern Sweden is currently working.
• Board Members’ responsibility for taxes owed by the company. According to the majority of the participants in the conference, this responsibility is far too extensive. The regulations need to be clarified and the degree of liability should be limited. Now, the assumption of responsibility is more or less totally unlimited, according to a new legal case.

Comments

It is important that new legislation influencing entrepreneurs be based on research and sound experience.

When it came to taxes, employee stock options and expert tax were in the lime light at this conference. To walk the talk when it comes to sustainability and infrastructure was also discussed. As an example, Mikael Blomkvist, founder of Roxtex, has, himself, paid for a charging station for electric cars outside Karskrona when he recently purchased a Tesla.

The conference was held in Hyllie, a location receiving attention in the recent debate on newly arrived migrants. There is the possibility that their entrepreneurship will be one of the themes at next year’s conference. Various proposals to include new migrants in the job market were already included in the spring budget and more proposals can be expected in the autumn budget. How things will go for the employee stock option proposal remains to be seen.