I'd argue about the "very easily" point for IT workers in the UK, as 100k+ salaries are very rare, and if you get shares instead of cash it's still taxed as income and doesn't trigger a self assessment. Only if you hold onto them and only if you make more than the capital gains threshold, you have to fill out a self assessment.
But in either case - sure, but the system means absolutely no worries about your tax return for 90% of British employees.
I've received shares several times from the company where I work in the UK and every single time they have been taxed as income. If you are just given shares straight up then yes, they are subject to income tax on their worth at the time of acquisition.
I'm not sure what you mean? At the point of acquisition if you are given shares worth say £10k, it's the same as being given £10k cash, or £10k gift of some sort - you pay income tax based on the value of what you were given. It's different if you were given options - then the difference between your purchase price and sale price is taxed as capital gains with separate rules.
Because while I work for a British company the shares are awarded by our French HQ, so unfortunately none of those share planes are available in this case. The company employs 50k+ people globally and only HQ awards shares.
Also I'm not sure how much tax this would actually save - you can only get £3600 worth of shares tax free per year on the employee incentive plan(which seems closest to what I'm getting, flat number of shares after 4 years). That's a very....low amount.
