Employee Ownership Month on October, 2024: Question about employee stock ownership?

October, 2024 is Employee Ownership Month 2024.

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I doubt it is capital gains - you had no money at risk hence no capital to gain on. Check with a tax pro.

Do I have access to the money from my Employee Stock Ownership Plan?

Generally an ESOP is another name for an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Usually an employee in an Employee Stock Purchase Plan agrees to have a certain percentage of their income withheld each month (2%-10%) to purchase company stocks semi-annually.

The company will sell employees the stock at a discount of usually 15% off the cheapest price of either the price on the day the period started or the day the period ended. The stock certificate is usually either sent to the employee or is held in a brokerage firm (E-Trade, Schwab, etc.) under the employees name.

At anytime after that, the employee can sell the stocks and if immediately sold, will be immediately taxed at the 15% increase (employer contribution) in value usually as normal income.

If the stock is held long enough, the 15% is usually taxed as capital gains if a profit is made.

There are also employee stock option plans (plans that allows an employee to purchased a certain number of stocks at a designated strike price) but those are generally not referred to as an ESOP.

Contact your Human Resources department to determine where the stocks are held and how you can get access to them.

How companies deal with employees who take too many days off?

Sick day policies can vary greatly from one company to the next and companies of all different sizes and ownerships. I think the most common policy you will find is to allow a maximum of 6 "occurrences" on a rolling 12 month cycle. What that means is that you could be out 3 congruent days with an illness yet it counts as only 1 occurrence. Having more than 6 within a rolling 12 month cycle constitutes first a verbal warning, followed by written, then termination for subsequent occurrences.

However, with the company being family owned, they may not have much of any policy in place. They may decide they don't even want to. So this can make your job difficult as manager. What you can do is take copious notes and keep employee files with documenting each of their sick days in terms of dates and reasons. If you do give any verbal or written warnings be sure to keep those documented as well and signed by that employee and yourself. When they become excessive you have backup that cannot be disputed.

They will continue to do it as long as they can get away with it. Once they realize there is such a thing as an employee file and type of discipline the behavior will likely stop or they will be replaced.