„Entry fee“ for participation in virtual participation programme
In the context of virtual participation programmes, it could be the case that selected employees are subsequently offered the programme and, depending on the time of joining the programme, the payment of an “entry fee” by the employee is required in order to receive the virtual participation (e.g. employees participating from the beginning are granted the virtual participation free of charge, while employees joining later are required to pay a certain fee).
Basically there is a period of more than one year between the granting of a virtual participation and the subsequent liquidity event (e.g. qualified exit). From a temporal point of view, the allocation of the virtual participation together with the payment of the entry fee and the remuneration from the participation programme therefore fall into different periods. In this context, the question arises how to deal with the entry fee at employee level from a tax perspective.
von Christoph Puchner und David Gloser