Github 주식 옵션

스톡 옵션.
이 페이지.
스톡 옵션 부여 수준.
프로모션을하는 경우 이전 수준과 새 수준의 차이에 해당하는 옵션 수에 대해 새로운 스톡 옵션 부여를 발행해야합니다. 예를 들어 회사 역사 초기에 가입 한 경우 발생할 수있는 이전 수준보다 많은 옵션을 현재 보유하고있는 경우에도 마찬가지입니다. 우리가 연락하지 않았다면 사람들에게 연락하십시오.
GitLab의 소유권 정보.
GitLab에서 우리 회사의 직원 소유권을 강력히 믿습니다. 우리는 주주를위한 가치 창출을 위해 사업을 수행하고 있으며, 직원들이 공유 된 성공을 통해 이익을 얻길 바랍니다.
이 문서 (GitLab 팀원과 신청자 만 액세스 가능)에서 미결제 주식 수 및 가장 최근의 밸류에이션에 대한 자세한 내용을 확인할 수 있습니다.
이 가이드는 GitLab을 이해하는 데 도움이됩니다. 그 목표는 전체 GitLab 2015 지분 인센티브 플랜 (“2015 Equity Plan вќќ) 및 귀하가 읽을 것을 권장하는 스톡 옵션 계약 (모든 법적 세부 사항에 들어가기)보다 더 간단합니다. 그러나이 가이드가 2015 년 주식 플랜 하에서 발행 된 주식 옵션 및 / 또는 주식을 이해하는 데 도움이되기를 희망하지만, 2015 년 주식 플랜 및 관련 스톡 옵션 계약에 적용 조건이 포함되어 있습니다. . 스톡 옵션 탐색 및 중요한 결정을하기 전에 질문이있는 경우 고용 변호사 및 / 또는 세무사에게 문의해야합니다.
스톡 옵션.
GitLab에서 우리는 인센티브 스톡 옵션 (ISO)과 비영리 스톡 옵션 (NSO)의 형태로 주식 보조금을 제공합니다. 이 두 종류의 교부금의 차이는 일반적으로 다음과 같습니다 : ISO는 미국 직원에게 발행되며 미국 국세청 (IRS)이 인정한 특별 세법의 세금 처리를 수행합니다. NSO는 계약자 및 비 미국 직원에게 부여됩니다. 당신이 GitLab 주식을 나중에 구입할 수있는 옵션을 부여 받았기 때문에 It†™ s는 옵션을 부르며, 부여 시점에 제공된 행사 가격으로 가득 조건을 조건으로합니다. 예를 들어, 현재 보통 주식 1 주당 행사 가격이 1 달러 인 스톡 옵션을 부여 받았고 나중에 GitLab이 성장하여 보통주가 주당 20 달러의 가치가있는 경우에도 일반 주식을 살 수 있습니다 주당 $ 1에 대한 옵션 행사시 주식.
스트레이트 주식 대신 스톡 옵션을주는 이유는 부여 일에 주식을 구입하기 위해 돈을 쓸 필요가 없기 때문에 옵션을 제공함에 따라 나중에 주식을 구매할 수 있기 때문입니다. 또한, 즉각적인 세금 부채가 발생할 수 있기 때문에 우리는 직접 주식 보조금을 제공하지 않습니다. 예를 들어, 오늘 GitLab 주식을 10,000 달러 가치로 주면이 과세 연도의 주식 가치 (잠재적으로 수천 달러)에 세금을 지불해야합니다. 우리가 주식의 $ 10,000 가치를위한 선택권을주는 경우에, 당신은 일반적으로 don†™ t 당신이 운동 할 때까지 어떤 세금도 지불해야한다 (나중에 운동에 더 많은 것). 다시 말하지만, 이것은 귀하의 옵션에 대한 세금 처리의 일반적인 요약이며, 세금 부채를 유발할 수있는 향후 조치를 취하기 전에 세무사와상의해야합니다.
권리를 포기한다는 것은 스톡 옵션으로 구매 한 주식을 완전히 소유하기 전에 일정 기간 동안 GitLab에 고용되어 있거나 다른 사람에게 서비스를 제공해야한다는 것을 의미합니다. 첫날 스톡 옵션에 따라 모든 보통주를 구매하고 소유 할 권리를 부여하는 대신 스톡 옵션에 따라 주식을 시간 경과에 따라 증분으로 소유하게됩니다. 이 과정을 가득 조건이라고하며 다른 회사는 다른 길이의 가득 일정을 제공합니다. GitLab에서 우리의 표준 관행은 4 년의 가득 기간을 가진 옵션을 발행하여 12 개월 후 주식의 4 분의 1, 2 년 후에 주식의 절반, 4 년 후에 모두 주식을 소유하게하는 것입니다. Vesting은 월 단위로 이루어 지므로 (매달 옵션의 1/48을 Vest로 제공), 많은 절절한 스케줄에는 절벽이 포함됩니다. 절벽은 주식이 월별로 가득되지 않는 대신 가득한 기간의 시작 부분에 있지만 절벽 기간이 끝나면 끝나는 기간입니다. GitLab을 포함한 대부분의 회사에서이 절벽 기간은 일반적으로 1 년입니다. 이것은 당신이 일년 내내 일하기 전에 당신이 당신의 일을 자발적으로 또는 비자 발적으로 떠나는 경우에, 당신의 선택권의 아무도는 주어지지 않을 것이라는 점을 의미합니다. 저 년의 끝에, you†™ ll는 자본의 전체 year†™ s 가치 (12 달)를 즉시 꽉 쥔다. 이것은 의미있는 시간 동안 회사에서 일한 사람들에게 GitLab 주식의 소유권을 유지하는 데 도움이됩니다.
이 섹션에서는 시간이 지남에 따라 모든 회사에서 발생하는 희석에 대해 다룹니다. 일반적으로 회사는 수시로 주식을 발행합니다. 예를 들어, XYZ 회사가 외부 투자자로부터 돈을 모으는 경우, 해당 투자자에게 판매 할 새로운 주식을 만들어야 할 수도 있습니다. 회사 XYZ의 추가 주식 발행의 영향은 그러한 발행 이전과 동일한 수의 주식을 보유하게 될 것이지만 더 많은 총 발행 주식수가 있기 때문에 결과적으로 회사의 더 작은 퍼센트를 소유하게됩니다 이것은 희석이라고 불린다.
희석이 반드시 가치 감소를 의미하는 것은 아닙니다. 예를 들어, 회사가 돈을 모으는 경우, 주식의 가치는 동일하게 유지 될 것입니다. 왜냐하면 company†™의 새로운 평가는 회사의 기존 가치 + 신규 자본의 증가와 동일 할 것이기 때문입니다. 예를 들어, XYZ 회사가 1 억 달러의 가치가 있고 2 천 5 백만 달러를 모금하면 XYZ 회사는 현재 125m에 달합니다. 전에 100 만 달러 중 5 %를 소유했다면 이제는 4 억 달러 중 12500 만 달러 (회사의 20 %가 팔렸거나 다르게 말하면 20 %가 희석 됨)를 소유하게됩니다. 기금 모금 전에 5 %의 지분은 5 백만 달러의 가치가 있었고 4 %의 지분은 5 백만 달러의 가치가있었습니다.
종료 후 운동 창.
사후 IPO 잠정 기간이 만료 (또는 우리가 매입) 될 때까지 회사 주가는 유동성이 아닙니다. 어떤 이유로 든 직장이 끝나면 옵션을 행사할 수있는 90 일짜리 창문이 있습니다. 이 창에서 행사 가격과 경우에 따라 스톡 옵션의 가치에 대한 세금을 내야합니다. 이는 상당한 금액입니다. 회사 주식이 유동적이지 않으면이 돈이 오기가 어려울 수 있습니다. 90 일 윈도우는 업계 표준이지만 이에 대한 좋은 논거가 있습니다. GitLab에서 스톡 옵션은 성공적인 IPO를 위해 우리 팀 구성원을 위임하려고합니다. 우리는 목표 달성을 위해 사람들에게 동기를 부여하고 보상하기를 원합니다. 따라서 우리는 재량에 따라 운동 창 확장을 사례별로 만 고려할 것입니다. 우리가 고려해야 할 상황의 예는 개인적인 상황으로 인해 끝나는 소중한 팀 구성원입니다. 대부분의 경우 연장은 없으며, 귀하가 주식을 완전히 보유한 경우에도 주식 및 세금을 직접 지불하거나 옵션을 잃어야합니다. 물론 2020 년 IPO는 대중의 야망입니다. 그러나 타이밍이나 전혀 일어나지 않을 수도 있습니다.
관리.
우리는 스톡 옵션 프로그램을 관리하기 위해 eShares를 사용합니다. GitLab 주소로 보조금 통지를 받게됩니다. 클릭하면 eShares에서 사용자 계정을 설정할 수 있습니다. eShares 시스템 내에서 주식 프로그램의 모든 조건과 특정 권한을 찾을 수 있습니다. 도움이되는 힌트로, 프로필에 두 번째 개인 주소를 추가하는 것이 좋습니다. eShares에 로그인 한 후 홈 화면의 왼쪽 하단에있는 프로필 및 보안을 클릭하여 추가 할 수 있습니다.
선택권 행사.
"옵션 행사"란 귀하의 옵션으로 보장되는 주식을 구입하는 것을 의미합니다. 옵션을 처음 부여했을 때 설정된 행사 가격을 지불하면 주식 증서가 반환됩니다. 직원들이 현존하는 세제 상 인센티브 (미국 및 네덜란드 세법에 따라 포함)를 통해 이익을 얻을 수있는 기회를 제공하기 위해 즉시 주식을 행사할 수있게되었습니다. 즉, 보유 기간을 시작하기 위해 귀하가 선택할 수있는 권리를 행사할 수 있습니다. 그러나 귀하의 고용 또는 기타 서비스가 어떤 이유로 종료되는 경우 회사는 미 평가 된 주식에 대한 환매 권리를 보유합니다. 미확인 주식의 조기 행사는 중요한 세금 영향을 미칠 수 있으므로 이러한 결정을 내리기 전에 조세 관련 전문가와상의해야합니다.
또한 회사는 귀하의 서비스 해지시 알려지지 않은 주식을 환매 할 권리가 있지만 회사는 그렇게하지 않을 의무가 없습니다. 따라서 당신은 투자의 일부 또는 전부를 잃을 수 있습니다. 우리는 젊은 회사이므로 많은 위험이 있으므로 위험을 알고 정보를 얻으십시오. 대부분의 벤처 기업이 실패한 것에 대한이 quora 실을 읽고 다시 돌아 오는 것보다 주식에 대한 세금을 더 많이내는 사람들의 이야기.
스톡 옵션 행사 방법.
옵션은 정기적 인 분기 별 이사회 회의에서 이사회의 승인을받습니다. 귀하의 보조금이 이사회의 승인을받은 후 귀하는 주식 수, 행사 가격, 가득 기간 및 기타 주요 조건을 포함하여 보조금 관련 정보가 포함 된 eShares로부터 보조금 통지를 받게됩니다.
주식을 행사하는 방법에는 두 가지가 있습니다.
전자 주민 (미국 거주자 전용) eShares 계정에 로그인하십시오. 은행에서 ACH 지불을 가능하게하는 지시 사항을 따르십시오. ACH가 활성화 된 후, 연습 옵션 교부금을 선택하고 수동 (비 ACH 및 비 미국 거주자) 프롬프트를 따르십시오. eShares 계정에 로그인하십시오. 보기 "(화면 오른쪽)"첨부 파일 및 메모 "를 클릭하십시오."운동 동의서 "를 클릭하십시오. 양식을 작성하고 서명 한 다음 CFO에게 PDF로 반환하십시오. 전신환으로 미국 달러로 지불하십시오. 계좌 이체 정보가 제공됩니다.
미국 거주자를위한 참고 사항 : 귀하가 선택한 방법에 상관없이 eShares가 제공 한 83-b 선거 양식을 다운로드하고 연습 30 일 이내에 국세청에 제출하십시오. CFO에게 선거 양식 사본을 보냅니다.
IRS에 83-b 선거를 보낼 때 다음 편지를 포함하기를 원할 것입니다.
재무부.
«eShares에서 제공 한 주소 83-b 지침»
관심을 가질만한 사람 :
GitLab Inc. 보통주의 구매와 관련하여 83-b 선거의 사본 2 부를 동봉하십시오. 접수 된 각인 된 쪽지 하나 하나를 내주인에게 우송 된 스탬프 봉투에 돌려 보내주십시오.
옵션 만기.
회사를 떠날 경우, 일반적으로 (마지막 근무일 기준으로) 기각 된 주식에 대해 옵션을 행사할 90 일이 소요됩니다. 귀하의 서비스가 끝난 후 미확인 주식을 구입할 수 없습니다. 귀하가 서비스 종료 후 90 일 이내에 귀하의 옵션을 행사하지 않을 경우, 귀하의 옵션은 종료되며 귀하는 그러한 옵션으로 주식을 구입할 수 없습니다. 또한 귀하의 고용 종료시 다른 기간이 만료되지 않은 경우 스톡 옵션은 발급 된 지 10 년 후에 만료됩니다.
운동 가격 및 409A 평가.
일반적으로 2015 년 주식 계획에 따라 부여 된 옵션의 행사 가격은 부여 일 현재 보통주의 공정한 시가가 적용됩니다. 간단히 말해서, 공평한 시장 가치는 공평한 사람이 보통주에 대해 지불 할 수있는 가격이지만, GitLab은 대형 증권 거래소에 상장 된 공공 기관이 아니기 때문에 이사회가 공정한 시장 가치를 결정할 책임이 있습니다. 이사회를 지원하기 위해 회사는 외부 고문을 보유하여 â € 409A 평가 вќ called라고하는 것을 수행합니다. 일반적으로 주식에 대한 평가가 낮을수록 더 많은 기회가 생기므로 직원에게는 더 좋습니다. 또한, 행사 가격이 낮 으면 주식을 행사하는 데 필요한 현금이 감소하고 일부 국가에서는 세금 혜택을받을 수있는 보유 기간을 설정할 수 있습니다. 우리는 여기에서 설명하지만 항상 조치를 취하기 전에 재무 또는 세무 고문과 확인하십시오.
세법은 복잡하기 때문에 어떤 결정을 내리기 전에 시동 스톡 옵션에 익숙한 세무사 또는 기타 세무사와상의해야합니다.
인센티브 스톡 옵션 (ISO)을 보유한 미국 직원의 경우 옵션을 행사할 때 세금이 부과되지 않습니다. 세금은 주식을 매각 할 때 얻게되는 이익이나 이익 (행사 가격과 판매 가격의 차이)으로 인해 부과됩니다. 보유 기간에 따라 세금은 경상 소득 또는 자본 이득으로 간주 될 수 있습니다. 그러나, 귀하가 주식을 매각하지 않더라도 ISO 실행시 행사 가격 (행사 일 현재 행사 가격과 공정 시장 가격의 차이)은 대안에 대한 "세금 선호"로 간주 될 수 있습니다 최소 세금 한도. 세금 전문가에게 문의하여 해당 사항이 귀하에게 적용되는지 확인해야합니다.
더 긴 보유 기간 혜택 외에도 IRS는 공인 중소기업 체 보유자 (QSBS)에게 추가 혜택을 제공합니다. 현재 GitLab은 QSBS 치료 기준을 충족하지만, 회사는 세금 또는 법률 자문을 제공 할 입장이 아니므로 자신의 세금 및 재정 고문과 확인하십시오. 이 기사는 QSBS 프로그램을보다 자세히 설명하는 데 도움이되는 것으로 나타났습니다.
일반적으로 비정규 스톡 옵션 (NSOs)의 경우, NSO 행사시 행사 가격 (운동 가격과 행사시 공정 시장 가격의 차이)에 대해 세금이 부과됩니다. NSO는 GitLab에서 돈을 쓰지 않는 사람들에게 주어질 수 있기 때문에 세법 하에서 훨씬 덜 유리하게 취급됩니다. 이것은 세법을 복잡하게 만들고이 문서의 현재 범위를 벗어납니다.
네덜란드에 본사를 둔 직원의 경우, 네덜란드 세무 당국은 행사 가격과 공정 시장 가격의 차이 만이 과세 대상으로 간주된다는 점에서 유사한 개념을 가지고 있습니다. 그래서 일찍 운동하면 둘 사이에 차이가 없으므로 과세 대상이되지 않습니다. 세금보고와 관련하여, 귀하는 행사시 공정 시장 가격과 행사 가격의 차이를보고합니다. 따라서 둘 사이에 차이가 없다면 아무 것도보고 할 필요가 없습니다. 일단 옵션 행사를 마치면 네델란드의 부 (富) 세금에 대한보고 방법에 대해 세무사와상의해야합니다. 회사는 조기 행사 또는 조세보고에 대한 조세 또는 법률 자문을 제공 할 수있는 입장이 아니므로 자신의 세금 및 재무 고문과 확인하십시오.
누구나 언제든지 CFO에게 옵션, GitLab†™의 기금 모금 또는 GitLab의 형평과 관련된 모든 사항에 대해 질문 할 수 있습니다. 그러나 모든 합법적 인 법률 및 세금 요구 사항이 적용될 수 있으므로 중요한 재무 결정을 내리기 전에 변호사와 상담해야합니다.
참조.
우리 팀원 인 드류 브레싱 (Drew Blessing)은 스톡 옵션에 대해 그가 무엇을 배웠는지에 대해 연구를 시작한 후에 그가 우리와 합류했을 때 받았기 때문에 썼다. 그의 기사는 대단히 감사하지만 GitLab Inc. 는 그것을 보증하지 않습니다.

Github 주식 옵션
당겨 요청 0.
오늘 GitHub에 가입하십시오.
GitHub은 코드를 호스팅하고 검토하고, 프로젝트를 관리하고, 소프트웨어를 함께 구축하기 위해 함께 일하는 2,000 만 명이 넘는 개발자들의 본거지입니다.
HTTPS로 복제하십시오.
Git을 사용하거나 웹 URL을 사용하여 SVN에서 체크 아웃하십시오.
나는 회계사가 아니다. 이 문서에 공헌 한 사람들은 회계사가 아닐 수도 있습니다. 이 문서는 세금 관련 조언이 아닙니다. 이 문서는 귀하의 개인적인 상황을 고려하지 않습니다. 이 문서를 읽으면이 문서를 읽었을 때 취한 모든 행동으로 인해 발생한 어떠한 손해에 대해서도 책임을지지 않는다는 데 동의하게됩니다.
이 문서는 상품성, 비 침해, 상품성 또는 특정 목적에의 적합성에 대한 어떠한 보증이나 조건을 포함하여 (단, 이에 한하지 않음) 명시 적이든 묵시적이든 어떠한 종류의 보증이나 조건없이 "있는 그대로"의 상태로 제공됩니다. 귀하는이 문서의 사용 또는 재배포의 적합성을 결정하고이 문서를 읽거나 그로부터 조언을 얻는 것과 관련된 모든 위험을 감수해야 할 전적인 책임이 있습니다.
회사에서 스톡 옵션을 받았을 때, 나는 내 세금 의무가 무엇인지 이해하기가 매우 어려웠다. ATO 웹 사이트는 엄청나게 일반적인 회계 용어로 주식 및 스톡 옵션에 대한 세금 규칙을 설명합니다. 특히 회사에서 제공 한 직원 공유 계획서에 기재된 조건과 ATO 웹 사이트의 조건 간에는 거의 겹치는 부분이 없었습니다. 이 문서는 전형적인 기술 신생 기업이 제공하는 직원 공유 계획에 적용 할 때 오스트레일리아 세법의 평이한 영어로 내 해석을 표현하려는 시도입니다. GitHub에서 호스팅되는 공동 작업을 목표로하며, 문제를 제기하거나 끌어 오기 요청을 제출하여 기여할 수 있습니다.
또한이 문서를 읽는 사람에 대한 공통된 이해에 반하는 세법에 대한 나의 해석을 검증하려는 시도이기도합니다. 그 맥락에서, 내가 만든 오류 (아마도 큰 것)가있을 가능성이 높습니다. 그래서 내가 무엇인가 잘못 생각한다면, 문제를 제기하거나 요청을 제출하십시오.
맨 먼저, 이 문서는 나 자신 (제임스 로퍼)이 내가 속한 직원 주식 계획과 관련하여 호주 세법에 대한 나의 이해를 명확히하기위한 것입니다.
둘째, 이 문서는 나와 비슷한 상황에있는 사람들을 대상으로합니다. 즉, 호주 거주자로서 호주에서 세금을 납부해야하며 창업을 위해 일하며 회사로부터 주식 또는 스톡 옵션을받습니다. 그것은 스톡 옵션과 관련하여 호주 세법의 규칙, 전문 용어 및 복잡성 중 일부에 익숙해지기위한 것입니다. 세금 조언이 아닙니다. 회계사에게 문의하십시오.
셋째, 이 문서는 세무서를위한 것입니다. 이 문서가 있다는 것은 ATO 웹 사이트의 호주 주식 세법에 대한 설명이 기술 창업 직원에게 일반적으로 제공되는 주식 분배 프로그램에 적용 할 때 부족하다는 것을 나타냅니다. 이 문서에서 사용 된 문구는 ATO 웹 사이트의 내용을 개선하는 시작으로 유용 할 수 있습니다. 따라서 기술 시작 직원 종업원 제도의 참가자가 쉽게 관련 될 수 있습니다.
물론 모든 직원 공유 체계가 다릅니다. 그러나 기술 창업이 제공하는 종업원 지주 제도는 일반적으로 세금 관점과 매우 유사합니다. 직원 공유 계획이 실리콘 밸리에 기반을 둔 시작을위한 것이라면 특히 그렇습니다. 실리콘 밸리의 직원 공유 계획은 너무 일반적이어서 회사가 작성한 템플릿 만 있으면 충분합니다. 필요한 모든 것입니다. 호주 기업의 경우 상황이 (분명히) 훨씬 더 어려워지고 훨씬 비싸지 만 그 의도는 같습니다.
따라서 일반적인 직원 공유 체계는 다음과 같이 보일 수 있습니다.
파업 가격으로 다양한 옵션이 부여됩니다. 옵션을 구입할 때 아주 적은 금액 (파격 가격보다 훨씬 적음)의 초기 가격을 지불해야하거나 무료로 제공되었을 수 있습니다. 옵션은 일정 기간 (보통 4 년) 동안 가득합니다. 첫해가 끝나면 25 %가 부여되고, 매월 또는 매 분기마다 점진적으로 소액이 확정 될 때까지 소액이 가득됩니다. 귀하는 언제든지 주식의 가득 된 부분을 행사할 수 있습니다. 파업 가격으로 주식을 사기위한 수단을 행사하는 것. 4 년이되기 전에 회사를 떠난 경우, 귀하는 양도되지 않은 주식을 몰수 당합니다. 귀하가 특정 기간 (예 : 90 일) 내에 행사할 수있는 기득권 부분. 그렇지 않은 경우 귀하는 권리를 포기합니다. 미래의 어떤 시점에서, 아마도 7 년 후에 옵션이 만료되고 그 날짜까지 운동을하지 않으면 옵션을 잃게됩니다.
기술 창업 초기에 제공되는 전형적인 종업원 분배 제도의 몇 가지 다른 측면이 있는데, 이는 당신에게 그렇게 흥미롭지 않을 수도 있지만 세법의 특정 영역에서 중요합니다. 이러한 점 중 하나라도 해당되지 않는다면이 부분이 중요합니다. 문서가 귀하에게 적용되지 않을 수도 있습니다 :
옵션 / 주식은 보통주입니다. 이것은 질문을 던지며, 특별한 비중은 무엇입니까? 기술 신생 기업에서 가장 흔하지 않은 비 일반주는 우선주입니다. 우선주는 회사가 매각 될 때 우대 공유자가 파이의 첫 번째 부분을 얻는 것을 의미하며 대개 그들이 투자 한 것에 가치를 부여합니다. 그것은 보험 정책입니다. 회사가 나 빠지면 적어도 다른 사람들이 돈을 벌기 전에 다시 넣는 것을 얻습니다. 이러한 유형의 주식은 벤처 자본가가 벤처 투자에 투자 할 때 대개 벤처 캐피탈리스트에게 제공됩니다. 그들은 결코 직원에게 주어지지 않습니다. 다른 종류의 주식도 있지만 신생 업체의 일반적인 종업원 구성표에서는 주식이 평범합니다. 귀하의 옵션 / 주식은 회사의 5 % 이상 또는 의결권의 5 %를 초과하지 않습니다. 회사 설립자가 아니라면 옵션을 통해 회사의 일부만을 얻을 수 있습니다. 주식 구성표는 회사의 호주 상주 직원의 75 % 이상에게 부여됩니다. 이것은 일반적인 기술 시작의 경우입니다.
마지막으로, 호주 세법이 2009 년에 변경되었습니다. 이 문서는 법이 변경된 후에받은 주식에 대해서만 이야기합니다.
스톡 옵션에 세금을 부과 할 때 가장 중요한 조건 중 하나는 할인입니다. 할인은 파업 가격과 주식 가치의 차이입니다. 그것은 주식을 구입할 때 실제로 할인을 받게되는데, 주식 옵션을 갖고 있지 않다면 그렇지 못할 것입니다. 낮은 가격으로 구매할 수 있습니다.
또 다른 중요한 용어는 공정한 시장 가치입니다. 당신이 일하는 회사가 벤처 기업이기 때문에 주식 시장에 아직 상장되어 있지 않기 때문에 주식 시장의 가격을 보는 것만 큼 단순한 가치는 없습니다. 그러나 주식에는 가치가 있으며, 나열되지 않은이 단계에서이 가치는 공정한 시장 가치입니다.
일반적인 주식 계획에서는 언제든지 주식의 공정한 시장 가치가 무엇인지 (또는 모든 주식 가격의 테이블을 구하십시오) 귀하의 회사에 물을 수 있습니다.
호주에서는 자본 이득 할인에 관한 이상한 규칙이 있습니다. 이 규칙은 직원 주식 계획과 매우 관련이 있으므로 여기에서 설명해야합니다.
고용주로부터 수입을받을 때, 그 소득은 귀하의 총 과세 소득에 포함됩니다. 자산 (예 : 투자 부동산 또는 주식)을 판매함으로써 이익을 올릴 때이를 자본 이득 (capital gain)이라하며 그 이득은 총 과세 소득에 포함됩니다. 그런 다음 평상시처럼 세금을냅니다. 단, 1 년 이상 자산을 소유 한 경우 (회계사가 "1 년 1 일"이라고 말하는 경우가 많음), 총 과세 소득에 자본 이득을 2로 나눌 수 있습니다. 따라서 자본 이득에 최소한 절반의 세금을 내게됩니다. 이것은 양도 소득세 할인이라고합니다.
이것은 스톡 옵션에 중요한 영향을 미칩니다. 왜냐하면 스톡 옵션으로 얻는 수익은 정규 수입입니까, 아니면 캡 티드 이득입니까? 후자의 경우 세금을 현저하게 줄일 수 있습니다. 이 질문에 대한 대답은 스톡 옵션의 복잡성이 많은 부분입니다.
우선, 귀하의 주식 계획이 외국 회사를위한 계획이라면 호주 회사를위한 규칙과 다를 바 없다는 것을 아는 것이 중요합니다. 세금 면제를 목적으로 호주 거주자 인 경우 주식 또는 주식 옵션을 보유하고있는 회사의 국가와 관계없이 모든 동일한 세금 의무가 적용됩니다. ATO가 주식 또는 주식 옵션을 보유하고 있음을 어떻게 알 수 있는지 궁금해 할 수 있습니다. 외국 회사, 당신이 그들에게 말하지 않으면 그들은 대답하지 않을 것입니다. 즉, 회사가 잘되면 갑자기 호주 은행 계좌에 100 만 달러의 상륙이 있었다면 세금 감사원이 돈을 어디에서 가져 왔는지 묻는 문을 두드리게 될 것입니다.
기본 위치부터 시작합시다. 스톡 옵션을 부여받을 때 세금을 납부해야합니다. 스톡 옵션은 주식 할인을 나타 내기 때문에 스톡 옵션 자체는 값 (할인액과 동일)을 가지며 따라서 귀하가받은 소득입니다. 따라서, 근로자 주식 계획 섹션에서 세금 환급에이 소득을 정규 소득 (자본 이득 제외)으로 포함시켜야합니다.
그러나 회사를 일찍 떠나는 경우에는 어떻게해야합니까? 귀하의 옵션은 아직 확정되지 않았으므로 귀하는 옵션을 상실하게됩니다. 즉, 귀하가 실제로받지 못한 것에 세금을 지불했음을 의미합니다. 이러한 이유로 세무서는 몰수의 실제 위험에 대한이 규칙을 정의합니다. 귀하의 옵션은 기득권이 없기 때문에 회사를 떠날 때 귀하가 선택권을 몰수하게되므로 몰수의 위험이 있습니다.
몰수의 실제 위험이있는 스톡 옵션 (여기에 포함되지 않을 여러 가지 조건이 있습니다)은 세금 연기 옵션으로 계산됩니다. 이는 반드시해야한다는 것을 의미합니다 (이는 분명하지 않습니다). , 이것이 필수 사항인지 여부 또는 선택 사항이 있는지 여부)는 특정 조건이 충족 될 때까지이를 선언 할 것을 연기합니다. 하나의 조건은 당신이 고용을 중단한다는 것입니다. 어쨌든 고용을 중단 할 때 미확인 옵션을 잃어 버리기 때문에이 조건은 적합하지 않습니다. 또 다른 조건은 주식이 더 이상 몰수의 위험이 없다는 것입니다. 그들은 이것이 가득되었을 때 일어난다.
따라서 일반적인 기술 시동 직원 공유 계획의 경우, 귀하가 받게 될 옵션에 대해 세금을 납부해야합니다.
질문은 실제로 얼마나 많은 세금을내는 것이 아니라 얼마나 많은 수입을 선언하는지입니다. 스톡 옵션이 가득되었을 때 옵션이 부여 된 시점의 공정한 시장 가치를 취하고, 행사 가격을 뺀 다음 할인을받습니다. 옵션을 구매하기 위해 초기 가격을 지불 한 경우 할인에서 비용을 뺀 값이므로 할인을 상쇄하고 그렇지 않으면 할인을 그대로 사용하므로 할인에서 할인을 뺍니다. 그런 다음 그 시간에 부여 된 옵션의 양을 곱하십시오. 이제 신고해야하는 소득 금액이 있습니다.
옵션이 연중 내내 부여되는 경우 (월별 또는 분기 별로 가득하기 때문에 가능할 수 있음) 여러 번 옵션이있는 경우 해당 월에 공정한 시장 가치를 사용하여 옵션이 부여 된 매월 / 분기에 대해이 계산을 수행해야합니다 또는 분기.
이 할인은 정규 수입입니다. 양도 소득세 할인을받을 자격이 없습니다.
물론, 옵션이 가득되었을 때 지불하는 세금 만이 주식에 세금을 부과 할 수있는 유일한 시간은 아닙니다. 미래의 어느 시점에서 옵션을 행사할 수 있으며, 그 시점에서 또는 나중에 시점에서 주식을 매각 할 수 있습니다. 이런 일이 발생하면, 기각 된 시점의 공정한 시장 가격으로부터 이득에 대한 세금을 납부해야합니다. 이것은 자본 이득입니다. 여기서 얻는 비용의 원가는 파업 가격이 아니라 옵션이 부여 될 때의 공정한 시장 가치입니다. 이미 파업 가격에서 정당한 시장 가격으로 세금을 납부 했으므로 그 이득에 세금을 두 번 내지 않아도됩니다.
주식을 1 년 이상 보유한 경우, 즉 옵션을 행사 한 후 주식을 매각하는 기간이 1 년 이상이되는 경우 (이는 사실이며, 옵션이 부여 된 시점부터입니다.), 그러면 50 %의 자본 이득 할인 혜택을받을 수 있습니다. 따라서 과세 소득에 대한 자본 이득의 절반 만 계산하면됩니다. 그렇지 않으면 과세 대상 소득에 대한 전체 자본 이득을 계산해야합니다.
여기서 타이밍이 중요하다는 것을 알 수 있습니다. 판매하기 전에 1 년에 옵션을 행사하면 많은 돈을 절약 할 수 있습니다. 이러한 이유로, 옵션을 판매하기 전에 먼저 옵션을 행사하기로 결정할 수 있습니다. 귀하는 옵션이 행사되는 즉시 즉시 행사할 수 있습니다. 유동성 이벤트가 발생하여 주식 / 기득권 옵션을 매각 할 수있는 경우에 대비하여 할인을 청구 할 수 있습니다. 물론 우리가 주식 거래의 표준 위험으로 옮겨 가고 있지만, 주식을 일찍 행사하면 회사가 파산 할 것이므로 돈을 잃을 것입니다.
때로는 기한 날짜, 운동 날짜 및 판매 날짜가 모두 동일합니다. 회사가 이미 등록되어 있고 주식을 가득 실은 상태로 판매하거나 회사를 인수했을 때 주식 매매의 조건으로 인해 모든 옵션이 한 번에 가득 찼다면 그들을 팔아라. 이 경우 귀하의 옵션이 가득 될 때의 시장 가치는 파는 가격이므로 파업 가격에서 판매 가격 (옵션이있는 경우 초기 구매 가격에서 제외)에 대한 전체 이익은 정규 수입으로 간주됩니다 - 자본 이득이 없으므로 양도 소득세가 없습니다.
옵션 중 일부가 기권되어 있고 세금을 냈지만 회사가 파산하거나 또는 어떤 이유로 귀하가 옵션을 행사하지 않기로 결정한 경우 귀하가 그 옵션을 상실한 경우. 한 번 소득으로 선언 한 할인은 이제 자본 손실로 선언 할 수 있습니다. 여기서 선언 한 것은 전체 할인입니다. 옵션의 초기 구매 가격이있는 경우 할인을 자본 손실로 주장 할 때 할인에서 뺍니다.
Alice는 2011 년 1 월 1 일에 $ 0.10의 행사 가격으로 1600 개의 옵션을 받았습니다. 첫 해에 부여 된 옵션의 25 %, 나머지 옵션의 1/16에 해당하는 매 분기마다. 2014 년 11 월 1 일, 회사는 주식 시장에 상장합니다. 2015 년 1 월 1 일에 모든 옵션을 연습 한 다음 2016 년 1 월 2 일에 주당 2.00 달러에 판매합니다.
Alice의 회사는 다음과 같은 공정한 시장 가치를 IPO까지 이끌었다.
2012 년 1 월 1 일 : 2012 년 6 월 3 일 $ 0.25 : 2013 년 3 월 14 일 0.25 달러 : 2013 년 11 월 25 일 $ 0.40 2013 년 5 월 25 일 : 2014 년 4 월 12 일 : 0.70 달러
2015 년 1 월 1 일 주가는 1.50 달러였습니다.
Alice는 다음과 같은 수입을 선언했습니다 :
위에서 언급 한 이익은 Alice가받은 현금과 동일하지 않습니다. Alice는 옵션을 행사하기 위해 160 달러를 지불하고 $ 3200에 판매하여 $ 3040을 벌었습니다. 자신이 신고 한 해마다 프리 CGT 할인 혜택을 추가하면 합계 $ 3040입니다. 그래서 그녀는 자신이 만든 모든 돈을 선언했습니다. 복잡하게 만드는 이유는 그 돈의 일부만이 그녀가 만든 해에 선언되었고, 다른 부분은 옵션이 확정됨에 따라 이전에 선언되었습니다.
보통 주식을 보너스로받는 경우 이러한 주식에는 가득 기간이없고 비용이 들지 않는 경우, 주식이 어떤 방식 으로든 제한되어 있다고하더라도 (즉, 지금은 팔 수 없다). 공정한 시장 가격에 귀하에게 부여 된 주식수를 곱한 금액은 보통 수익으로 표기됩니다. 당신이 그 주식을 팔면, 당신에게 주어진 시간에 공정한 시장 가치를 뺀다. 그리고 그 수는 자본 이득으로 간주된다. 그 금액은 귀하의 과세 소득에 추가되며 주식이 1 년 이상 보유되어있는 경우 자본 이득 할인을 적용합니다.
ATO 웹 사이트 어딘가에서 "조끼"라는 단어와 "tax deferred"라는 단어가 연결되기를 바랍니다. 규칙은 간단합니다 : 옵션이 가득 될 때까지 세금이 연기됩니다. But to understand that, you must read through several pages of information and examples. Eventually, you stumble across this page, where the term vest is used. But even then there it's not clear that each month, the vested portion is no longer deferrable and must be declared, the wording makes it seem to me that if any part is still unvested, the whole lot can be deferred. Most of the examples on the ATO website talk about a share price as if the shares are traded on the stock market. But this is never the case for tech startups. Examples that describe startup situations are sorely needed. Most tech startup employee share schemes use the term "fair market value", while the ATO website uses the term "market value". It would be very useful if the website says "for companies that are not publicly traded, the market value is often referred to as the fair market value. For most startups, employees and ex employees can ask what the fair market value was at any time from their employer. If you don't know that, the ATO website makes it seem like it's this mystical number that it's up to you to use some unpublished methodology to determine, see this page. It should be stated that employees can usually obtain this from their employer. Since there is such thing as a typical employee share scheme for tech startups, and since this is becoming more and more common, the ATO should publish a fact sheet, similar to this very document, which describes in the same terms as commonly used in employee share schemes for tech startups , what their tax obligations are.
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If you’ve ever worked or considered working for a startup or fast-growing tech company, you probably have experienced or tried to learn about stock options, RSUs, and other types of equity compensation .
It is a confusing topic that is often not discussed clearly. This is unfortunate because it makes it harder to make good decisions. Many people learn the basic ideas through experience or reading, but equity compensation is a complicated and difficult area usually only thoroughly understood by professionals. Sadly, both companies and employees are routinely hurt by costly mistakes which might otherwise be avoidable.
This guide aims to improve that situation. It does not presume you have a law degree or MBA. The material is dense, but we endeavor to present it in a way that is understandable to lawyers and non-lawyers alike.
Think of the guide as a small book, not a blog. We suggest you star and refer to it in the future. An hour or two reading the material here and the linked resources could ultimately be among the most financially valuable ways you could spend that time.
This document and the discussion around it are not legal or tax advice. Talk to a professional if you need advice about your particular situation. See the full disclaimer below.
If you’re thinking of working for a company that is offering you equity, it is critical to understand both the basics and some very technical details about the exact type of compensation you are being offered, including the tax consequences. Equity compensation and tax might seem like different topics, but they are so intertwined it's hard to explain one without the other. An understanding of the underlying rules is necessary for negotiating fair offers — on both sides.
Of course, this guide can’t replace professional advice. But ask anyone who’s worked in startups and they’ll have stories of how they or their colleagues made costly mistakes as a result of not understanding the details. Assessing the advice you receive from your personal or company attorney can be easier when you have all the information to work with.
This guide applies to C corporations in the United States . It is geared towards employees, advisors, and independent contractors who want to know how stock and stock options in C corporations work. This includes most startups. Typically startups and major companies are C corporations, and not LLCs or S corporations. LLC equity compensation is different and not covered in this guide (yet). It may also be useful for founders or hiring managers, who need to talk about equity compensation with employees or potential hires, or anyone curious to learn about these topics. The aim is to be as helpful for the absolute beginner as it is for those with more experience.
We keep this brief, so you can skim and return to it easily. Sections are organized into individual points, so it’s easier to read, refer back to, contribute to, and correct. We link liberally, so we can define terms, include curated articles that have a lot more detail, and give credit where it is due.
🔹 Important or often overlooked tip ❗ “Serious” gotcha where risks or costs are significant 🔸 A gotcha or limitation to be aware of 🌪 Controversial topic where informed opinion varies significantly ☝️ Common confusion or misunderstanding, such as confusing terminology 📥 PDF or form or download.
This is an open guide . It’s open to contributions , so unlike a blog, it is living, and can be improved. While a lot of information on this topic is just a Google search away, it is scattered about. Many blogs and articles focus only on a narrow topic, are getting older, or are on sites supported by ads or other products. It should be possible to assemble this information sensibly, for free. This document was started by Joshua Levy and Joe Wallin. It’s a preliminary version, and no doubt has some errors and shortcomings, but we want to see it evolve.
If you have a question that is not answered here, please ask it here. It will help us improve the guide, and we’ll let you know if we have an answer. Even better is to file issues or PRs . We gladly credit all contributors.
This section covers the fundamental concepts and terminology around stock, stock options, and equity compensation.
Your compensation is everything you get for working for a company. When you negotiate compensation with a company, the elements to think about are cash (salary and bonus), benefits (health insurance, retirement, other perks), and equity (what we discuss here). Equity compensation refers to owning stock or having the right to buy stock in a company. In general, this guide is focused on equity compensation in corporations, not limited liability companies. The reasons for this are: (i) corporations are the most common form of startup company in the U. S. (LLCs are rarely used as the choice of entity for technology startups), and (ii) equity compensation for limited liability companies is dramatically different from equity compensation in corporations. Equity compensation is commonly used for founders, executives, employees, contractors, advisors, directors, and others. The purpose of equity compensation is twofold: To attract the best talent; and To align incentives between individuals and the interests of the company. Equity compensation generally consists of stock or stock options or restricted stock units (RSUs) in the company. We’ll define these concepts next.
Stock represents ownership of the company, and is measured in shares . Founders, investors, employees, board members, and others like contractors or advisors may all have stock. Stock in private companies frequently cannot be sold and may need to be held indefinitely, or at least until the company is sold. In public companies , people can buy and sell stock on exchanges, but in private companies like startups, usually you can’t buy and sell stock easily. Public and some private companies can pay dividends to shareholders, but this is not common among technology startups. The total number of outstanding shares reflects how many shares are currently held by all shareholders. This number starts at an essentially arbitrary value (such as 10 million) and thereafter will increase as new shares are issued. It may increase or decrease for other reasons, too, such as stock splits and share buy back. If you have stock, what ultimately determines its value is percentage ownership of the entire company, not the absolute number of shares. To determine the percentage of the company a certain number of shares represent, divide it by the number of outstanding shares. ☝️ 🔹 However, there are subtleties to be aware of regarding what this outstanding total refers to: Private companies always have what is referred to as “authorized but unissued” shares. For example, a corporation might have 100 million authorized shares, but will only have actually issued 10 million shares. In this example, the corporation would have 90 million authorized but unissued shares. When you are trying to determine what percentage a number of shares represents, you do not make reference to the authorized but unissued shares. You actually want to know the total issued, but even this number can be confusing, as it can be computed more than one way. Typically, people refer to the total number of shares “issued and outstanding” or “fully diluted.” “Issued and outstanding” refers to the number of shares actually issued by the company to shareholders. Note this will not include shares that others may have an option to purchase. “Fully diluted” refers to all of the shares that have been issued, all of the shares that have been set aside in a stock incentive plan, and all of the shares that could be issued if all convertible securities (such as outstanding warrants) were exercised. A key difference is that this total will include all the shares in the employee option pool that are reserved but not yet issued to employees. (The option pool is discussed more below.) Generally, it’s best to know the fully diluted number to know the likely percentage a number of shares is worth in the future. The terminology mentioned here isn’t universally applied, either, so it’s worth discussing it to be sure there is no miscommunication.
It is hard to value private company stock. A stock certificate is a piece of paper that entitles you to something of highly uncertain value, and could well be worthless in the future, or highly valuable, depending on the fate of the company. 🔸 Generally, selling stock in a private company may be difficult, as the company is not listed on exchanges, and in any case, there may be restrictions on the stock imposed by the company. In startups, it is typical to hold the stock until the company is sold or becomes public in an IPO . A sale or IPO is often called an exit . Sales, dissolutions, and bankruptcy are sometimes called liquidations . 🔹 Private sales: In a few cases, you may be able to sell private company stock to another private party, such as an accredited investor who wants to become an investor in the company, but this is fairly rare. This is often called the secondary market . Sales generally require the agreement and cooperation of the company. For example, typically your shares would be subject to a right of first refusal in favor of the company (meaning, you couldn’t sell your shares to a third party without offering to sell it to the company first). Another possible roadblock is that private buyers may want the company's internal financials to establish the value of the stock, and this typically requires the cooperation of the company. There have been some efforts such as SharesPost, Equidate, and EquityZen to establish a market around such sales, particularly for well-known pre-IPO companies, but it’s still not a routine practice. Quora has more discussion on this topic.
Stock comes in two main types, common stock and preferred stock . You’ll also hear the term founders’ stock , which is (usually) common stock allocated at a company’s formation. It’s complicated, but in general preferred stock is stock that has rights, preferences, and privileges that common stock does not have. For example, preferred stock usually has a liquidation preference , which gives the preferred stock owner the right to be paid before the common stock owners upon liquidation. Liquidation overhang refers to how much liquidation preference is ahead of the common stock. For example, if the company has received hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from investors, the common stock will not be worth anything on a sale unless the sale price exceeds the liquidation overhang. Generally employees and service providers receive common stock or options to purchase common stock in return for their service, and investors receive preferred stock.
Stock options (more specifically, “employee stock options” when given to employees) are contracts that allow you to buy shares, which is called exercising the options. Options are not the same as stock; they are only the right to buy stock upon and subject to the conditions specified in the option agreement. Stock options allow you to buy shares at a fixed price per share, the strike price . The strike price is generally set lower (often much lower) than what people expect will be the future value of the stock, which means you can make money when you sell the stock. Options expire. You need to know how long the exercise window will be open. Options are only exercisable for a fixed period of time, typically seven to ten years as long as you are working for the company. ❗ Importantly, they also expire when you quit working for the company (e. g., 90 days after termination of service) — so can effectively be worthless if you cannot exercise them before you leave. 🔹 Recently (since around 2015) a few companies are finding ways to keep the exercise window open for years after leaving a company, and promote this as fairer to employees. See this list, which includes Amplitude, Clef, Coinbase, Pinterest, and Quora. 🔸 Vesting: Stock and stock options may be granted to you, but they come with a variety of conditions and limitations. One of the most significant conditions is that you usually “earn” rights to the shares or options over time or under certain events. This is called vesting . Vesting usually occurs according to a vesting schedule . You vest only while you work for the company. For example, it is very common to have stock or options vest over a period of four years, a bit at a time, where none of it is vested at first, and all of it is vested after four years. Vesting schedules can also have a cliff , where until you work for a given amount of time, you are 0% vested. For example, if your equity award had a one-year cliff and you only worked for the company for 11 months, you would not get anything, since you not have vested in any part of your award. Similarly, if the company is sold within a year, depending on what your paperwork says, you may also receive nothing on the sale of the company. A very common vesting schedule is vesting over 4 years, with a 1 year cliff. This means you get 0% vesting for the first 12 months, 25% vesting at the 12th month, and 1/48th (2.08%) more vesting each month until the 48th month. For example, if you leave just before a year is up, you get nothing, but if you leave after 3 years, you get 75%. Vesting might also occur in certain situations. You may have acceleration , where vesting is triggered if a company is sold ( single trigger ) or if it’s sold and you’re fired ( double trigger ). This is common for founders and not so common for employees. Grants for advisors typically vest over a shorter period than employee grants, often two years. Advisor grants also typically have a longer exercise window post termination of service. Typical terms for advisors, including equity levels, are available from the Founder Institute’s 📥 Founder/Advisor Standard Template (FAST).
Restricted stock units (RSUs) are a different type of compensation. RSUs are an agreement by the company to issue you shares of stock or the cash value of shares of stock on a future date. Each unit represents one share of stock or the cash value of one share of stock that you will receive in the future. The date on which you receive the shares or cash payment is the settlement date . 🔸 They may vest according to a vesting schedule. The settlement date may be the time-based vesting date or a later date based on, for instance, the date of a company's IPO. RSUs are more common for larger companies and options are more common for startups. RSUs are difficult in a startup or early stage company because when the RSUs vest, the value of the shares might be significant, and taxes will be owed on the receipt of the shares. This is not a bad result when the company has sufficient capital to help the employee make the tax payments, or the company is a public company that has put in place a program for selling shares to pay the taxes. But for cash-strapped private startups, neither of these are possibilities. This is the reason most startups use stock options, not RSUs or stock bonuses or stock awards. RSUs are often considered less preferable to grantees since they remove control over when you owe tax. Options, if granted with an exercise price equal to the fair market value of the stock, are not taxed until exercise, an event under the control of the optionee. If a company awards you an RSU or restricted stock award which vests over time, you will be taxed on the vesting schedule. You have been put on “autopilot” with respect to the timing of the tax event. This can be a really bad thing if, on the date of vesting, the shares are worth a lot and consequently you owe a lot of tax. ☝️ By the way, don’t confuse “restricted stock units” with “restricted stock” , which is an entirely different thing (described next).
These are a few different types of equity awards and topics that are less common, but we mention for completeness.
“Phantom equity” is a type of compensation award that references equity, but does not entitle the recipient to actual equity in the business. These awards come under a variety of different monikers, but the key to understanding them is knowing that they are really just cash bonus plans, but the cash amounts are determined by reference to a company's stock. Phantom stock is an example. A phantom stock award would be an award where you are entitled to a payment equal to the value of a share of the company's stock, upon the occurrence of certain events. Stock Appreciation Rights are another example. An SAR gives the recipient the right to receive a payment the amount of which is calculated by reference to the appreciation in the equity of the company. Phantom equity can have significant value, but may be perceived as less valuable by workers because of the contractual nature of the promises. Phantom equity plans can be set up as purely discretionary bonus plans, which is less attractive than owning a piece of something. Warrants are another kind of option to purchase stock. As an employee or advisor, you may not encounter them, but it’s worth knowing they exist. They are generally used in investment transactions (for example, in a convertible note offering, investors may also get a warrant; or a law firm may ask for one in exchange for vendor financing). They differ from stock options in that they are more abbreviated and stand-alone legal documents, not granted pursuant to a “plan.” Also, because they are usually used in the investment context, they do not typically include service-based vesting provisions or termination at end of service, and are valid for a set number of years (e. g., 10 years).
Now for the details around using stock and options for compensation.
Companies can give equity compensation as stock awards, stock options, or RSUs. While the intent of each is similar, they differ in many ways, particularly around taxation. RSUs generally don’t make sense for early stage companies. If companies do grant stock, it may be restricted stock . In this context, “restricted” refers to the fact that the stock will be subject to repurchase at the lower of fair market value or cost, which repurchase right lapses over the service-based vesting period. Typically, stock awards are limited to executives or very early hires, since once the value of the shares increases, the tax burden of receiving them can be too great for most people. Instead, it’s more common for employees to get stock options. 🔹 At some point early on, generally before the first employees are hired, stock will be allocated to a stock option pool . A typical size for this is 20% of the stock of the company, but it can be 10%, 15%, or other sizes. Once the pool is established, then the company's board of directors grants pieces of it to employees as they join the company. Often, the whole pool is never used. The size of the pool is not just about how generous the company is with employees; it is determined by complex factors between founders and investors. 🔹 Compensatory stock options come in two flavors: Incentive stock options (ISOs) (also called statutory stock options) Nonstatutory stock options (NSOs) (also called non-qualifying stock options, or NQOs) ISOs are common for employees because they have the possibility of being more favorable from a tax point of view than NSOs. They can only be granted to employees (not independent contractors or directors who are not also employees). But ISOs have a number of limitations and conditions and can also create difficult tax consequences. 이에 대한 자세한 내용은 아래를 참조하십시오. 🔹 Sometimes, to help you lower your tax burden, the company makes it possible to early exercise (or forward exercise) stock options. This means you exercise them even before they vest: you exercise them and you become a stockholder, but the company has the right to repurchase the unvested shares (at the lower of the price you paid or the fair market value of the shares) if you quit working for the company. The company will typically repurchase the unvested shares should you leave the company before the stock you’ve purchased vests. 🔸 Stock options will expire after you leave a company (typically after 90 days ). You might early exercise, or exercise at different times during your employment, depending on how much it costs and what the tax implications are. 이에 대한 자세한 내용은 아래를 참조하십시오. Companies may impose additional restrictions on stock that is vested. For example, your shares are very likely subject to a right of first refusal. And it can happen that companies reserve the right to repurchase vested shares in certain events.
Equity compensation awards can give rise to federal and state income taxes as well as employment taxes and Medicare surtax charges. We’ll first back up and discuss fundamentals of how different kinds of taxes are calculated.
You must pay federal, state, and in some cases, local taxes on income. State tax rates and rules vary significantly state to state. Since federal rates are much higher than state rates, you usually think of federal tax planning first. 🔹 In general, federal tax applies to many kinds of income. If you’re an employee at a startup, you need to consider four kinds of federal tax, each of which is computed differently: Ordinary income tax — the tax on your wages or salary income, as well as investment income that is “short-term” Employment taxes — Social Security and Medicare taxes that are withheld from your paycheck. The Social Security wage withholding rate is 6.2% up to the FICA wage base. The Hospital Insurance component is 1.45%, and it does not phase out above the FICA wage base. Long-term capital gains tax — taxes on investment gains that are “long-term” are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) — an entirely different kind of tax that has separate rules and only applies in some situations Ordinary income tax applies in the situations you’re probably already familiar with, where you pay taxes on salaries or wages. Tax rates are based on filing status, i. e., if you are single, married, or support a family, and on how much you make, i. e. which income bracket you fall under. As of 2015, there are income brackets at 10% , 15% , 25% , 28% , 33% , 35% , and 39.6% marginal tax rates. Be sure you understand how these brackets work, and what bracket you’re likely to be in. ☝️ There is sometimes a misconception that if you move to a higher bracket, you’ll make less money. What actually happens is when you cross certain thresholds, each additional (marginal) dollar money you make is taxed at a higher rate, equal to the bracket you’re in. It looks roughly like this (source). Investment gains, such as buying and selling a stock, are similarly taxed at “ordinary” rates, unless they are long-term , which means you held the asset for more than a year. 📥 You also pay a number of other federal taxes (see a 2015 summary for all states), notably: 6.2% for Social Security on your first $118,500 1.45% for Medicare 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on income over $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (married filing jointly) 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax on investment income if you make over $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (married filing jointly) Ordinary federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare taxes are withheld from your paycheck by your employer and are called employment taxes . 🔹 Long-term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income tax: 0% , 15% , or 20% . This covers cases where you get dividends or sell stock after holding it a year. If you are in the middle brackets (more than about $37K and less than $413K of ordinary income), your long-term capital gains rate is 15% (more details). State long-term capital gains rates vary widely. California has the highest, at 13.3%, while other states have none. For this reason, some people even consider moving to another state if they are likely to have a windfall gain, like selling a lot of stock after an IPO. Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is a complex part of the federal tax code many taxpayers never worry about. Generally, you do not pay unless you have high income (>$250K) or high deductions. It also depends on the state you’re in, since your state taxes can significantly affect your deductions. Confusingly, if you are affected, AMT tax rates are usually at 26% or 28% marginal tax rate, but effectively is 35% for some ranges, meaning it is higher than ordinary income tax for some incomes and lower for others. AMT rules are so complicated you often need professional tax help if they might apply to you. The IRS’s AMT Assistant might also help. ❗ AMT is important to understand because exercising incentive stock options can trigger AMT. In some cases a lot of AMT, even when you haven’t sold the stock and have no money to pay. 이에 대한 자세한 내용은 아래를 참조하십시오. 🔹 Section 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code provides a special tax break for qualified small business stock held for more than five years. Currently, this tax break is a 100% exclusion from income for up to $10M in gain. There are also special rules that enable you to rollover gain on qualified small business stock you have held for less than five years. Stock received on the exercise of options can qualify for the Section 1202 stock benefit.
Now we’ve covered the basic concepts of equity and taxes, here are some messy details of how they interact.
As already discussed, employees can get restricted stock, stock options, or RSUs. The tax consequences for each of these is dramatically different.
Generally, restricted stock is taxed when it vests as ordinary income. Of course, if the stock is in a startup with low value, this may not result in very much tax being owed. But if it is years later from when the stock was first granted, and the company is worth a lot, the taxes owed could be significant. 🔹 However, the Internal Revenue Code offers an alternative, called a Section 83(b) election , which is an election to be taxed on the receipt of the property, even though you might not get to keep it since it has not vested. The presumption of the tax law would normally be that you do not owe tax until property you have received vests. With a Section 83(b) election, you’re telling the IRS you want to pay taxes early, on stock that is not vested yet, instead of paying as it vests. The election can potentially reduce your tax significantly: If the shares go up in value, the taxes owed on vesting might be a lot greater than the taxes owed at the time of receipt. An 83(b) election isn’t guaranteed to reduce your taxes, of course. For example, the value of the stock may not increase. And if you leave the company before you vest, you don't get the taxes you’ve paid back. ❗ You must file the 83(b) election yourself with the IRS within 30 days of the grant or exercise, or the opportunity is irrevocably lost. 🔸 Section 83(b) elections cannot be made on the receipt of a stock option. They can only be made on the receipt of actual shares of stock. If you receive an immediately exercisable stock option (meaning, an option that is early exercisable, when it is not vested), and you exercise the option before the option vests, you can make an 83(b) election on your receipt of the shares on exercise. Section 83(b) elections do not apply to vested shares; it only applies to stock that is not yet vested. Thus, if you receive options that are not early exercisable, which you cannot exercise until vested — then an 83(b) election would not apply. 🔹 Founders and very early employees will almost always want to do an 83(b) election upon the receipt of unvested shares, since the stock value is probably low. If the value is really low, and the taxes owed are not that great, you can make the election without having to pay much tax and start your capital gains holding period on the shares.
When stock vests, or you exercise an option, the IRS will consider what the fair market value (FMV) of the stock is when determining the tax you owe. Of course, if no one is buying and selling stock, as is the case in most startups, then its value isn’t obvious. For the IRS to evaluate how much stock is worth, it uses what is known as the 409A valuation of the company. The startup pays for an appraisal that sets the 409A, typically annually or after events like fundraising. In practice, this number could be low or high. 🔹 A company wants the 409A to be low, so that employees make more off options, but not low enough the IRS won’t consider it reasonable. Typically, the 409A is much less than what investors pay for preferred stock; for example, it might be only a third of the preferred stock price.
Startups generally decide to give ISOs or NSOs depending on the legal advice they get. It’s rarely up to you which you get, so you need to know about both. There are pros and cons of each from both the recipient’s and the company’s perspective. 🔸 ISOs cannot be granted to non-employees (i. e., independent contractors). ❗ 🔹 When you owe tax: When you get stock options and are considering if and when to exercise them, you need to think about the taxes. In principle, you need to think about taxes (1) at time of grant; (2) at time of exercise; and (3) at time of sale. These events trigger ordinary tax (high), long-term capital gains (low), or AMT (possibly high) taxes in different ways for NSOs and ISOs. The taxes will depend on the gain (sometimes called spread) between the strike price and the FMV, known as the bargain element , and the gain on the sale. This isn’t the whole story, but from an employee’s point of view, the key differences are (see here, here, here, and here): Restricted stock awards : Assuming vesting, you pay full taxes early with the 83(b) or at vesting: At grant: If 83(b) election filed, ordinary tax on FMV None otherwise At vesting: None if 83(b) election filed Ordinary tax on FMV of vested portion otherwise At sale: Long-term capital gains tax on gain if held for 1 year past exercise Ordinary tax otherwise (including immediate sale) NSOs : You pay full taxes at exercise, and the sale is like any investment gain: At grant and vesting: No tax if granted at FMV At exercise: Ordinary tax on the bargain element Income and employment tax withholding on paycheck At sale: Long-term capital gains tax on gain if held for 1 year past exercise Ordinary tax otherwise (including immediate sale) ISOs: You might pay less tax at exercise, but it’s complicated: At grant and vesting: No tax if granted at FMV At exercise: AMT tax event on the bargain element; no ordinary or capital gains tax No income or employment tax withholding on paycheck At sale: Long-term capital gains if held for 1 year past exercise and 2 years past grant date Ordinary tax otherwise (including immediate sale) ❗ The AMT trap: If you have received an ISO, if you exercise it may unexpectedly trigger a big AMT bill — even before you actually make any money on a sale! To make matters worse, you probably can’t sell the stock to pay the tax bill. This infamous problem (more details) has trapped many employees and bankrupted people during past dot-com busts. Now more people know about it, but it’s still a significant obstacle to plan around. (Note that if your AMT is for events prior to 2008, you’re off the hook.) 🔹 If you are granted ISOs or NSOs at a low strike price, and the bargain element is zero, then you may be able to exercise at a reasonable price without triggering taxes at all. So assuming the company allows it, it makes sense to early exercise immediately (buying most or all of the shares, even though they’re not vested yet) and simultaneously file an 83(b) election. 🔸 ☝️ Section 83(b) elections are elections to be taxed on the receipt of property even though you might have to forfeit or give back the property to the company. You can make an election on the receipt of stock, but you cannot make the election on the receipt of an option or an RSU because options and RSUs are not considered property for purposes of Section 83(b). 🔸 🌪 ISOs are often preferred by startups as it’s supposed to be better for an employee from a tax perspective. This assumes that (1) AMT won’t be triggered and (2) you’ll get low long-term capital gains rate by holding the stock for the appropriate holding periods. However, often you either run afoul of the AMT trap, or don’t hold the stock long enough with the complicated 1 year + 2 year requirement, or the spread at exercise is zero or small, so the difference wouldn’t matter anyway. NSOs do have a slightly higher tax because of the employment taxes. Overall, it’s not clear the ISO is that much better for employees, so manypeople argue for NSOs instead. 🔸 ☝️ Even more confusingly, ISOs can make it harder to meet the long-term capital gains holding period. Many people expect early exercise together with an 83(b) election will help them hold the stock longer, to qualify for long-term capital gains. While this is true for NSOs, there is a murky part of the rules on ISOs that implies that even with an 83(b) election, the capital gain holding period does not begin until the shares actually vest. So, if you want to immediately exercise an option and file a Section 83(b) election, and you might have liquidity soon, it’s better if you can have it be an NSO.
If you are awarded RSUs, each unit represents one share of stock that you will be given when the units vest. 🔸 When you receive your shares you are taxed on their value at that time. If you are an employee, this means you have to write a check to the company to cover your income and employment tax withholding. If you receive an RSU when the stock is of little value, you cannot elect to be taxed on the value of that stock when you receive the RSU — you pay taxes at vesting time, based on the shares’ value at that time. 🔸 There is a combination of big problems for RSUs in private companies: You will owe tax when you receive the shares — even though they are illiquid. You can't minimize the impact of an increase in value of the underlying shares between the date you receive the RSU and the date it is settled. If you are an employee you will have to write a check to the company to satisfy your income and employment tax withholding. 🔸 RSUs are less attractive than options from a tax point of view because you cannot make an 83(b) election with respect to an RSU. By contrast, if you receive a stock option, as long as it is priced at fair market value, you will have no income upon receipt of the options, and your income tax and employment tax consequences will be deferred until you exercise — an event under your control for the most part. Taxation summary (compare with above): At grant: No tax At vesting/delivery: Ordinary tax on current share value At sale: Long-term capital gains tax on gain if held for 1 year past exercise Ordinary tax otherwise (including immediate sale)
This section is a quick refresher on how companies raise funding and grow, as this is critical to understanding the value of a company and what equity in a company is worth.
The stage of a startup is largely reflected in how much funding it has raised. Very roughly, typical levels are: Bootstrapped : No funding — founders are figuring out what to build or starting to build with their own time or resources. Series Seed ($250K to $2 million): Figure out the product and market. Series A ($2 to $15 million): Scaling product and making the business model work. Series B (tens of millions): Scaling business. Series C, D, E, etc. (tens to hundreds of millions): Continued scaling of business. 🔸 Most startups don’t get far. Very roughly, if you look at angel investments, more than half of investments fail, one in 3 are small successes (1X to 5X returns), one in 8 are big successes (5X to 30x), and one in 20 are huge successes (30X+). 🔸 Each stage reflects the removal of risk and increased dilution . For this reason, the equity team members get is higher in the earlier stages (starting with founders) and increasingly lower as a company matures. (See the picture above.) 🔹 It is critical to understand risk and dilution to know the possible future value of equity. This article from Leo Polovets gives a good overview. 🔹 If you’re talking with a startup, there are lots of questions to ask in order to assess the state of the company's business. Startups are legitimately careful about sharing financial information, so you may not get full answers to all of these, but you should at least ask: How much money has the company raised (including in how many rounds, and when)? What did the last round value the company at? Will it likely raise more capital soon? How long will your current funding last? (This will likely be given at current burn rate, i. e. no additional hiring.) What is the hiring plan? (How many people over what time frame?) What is the revenue now, if any? What are the revenue goals/projections? Where do you see this company in 1 year and 5 years? Revenue? Employees? Market position?
It takes quite a bit of know-how to be able discuss, understand, and evaluate equity compensation offers. If you don’t yet have an offer, see the sections below on evaluating a company and negotiation, as well.
We all know the value of cash. But determining the value of equity is hard, because you have to figure out or make guesses about several things: Stock value : The value the company will have in the future, which depends on the value of the business, and the number of shares you own. Vesting and liquidity : When you actually will own the shares and when you’ll be able to sell them. Tax : Both purchase and sale of stock can require that you pay taxes — sometimes very large amounts. Also, there are several kinds of taxes: Income, capital gains, and AMT. 🔹 Know the percentage: Knowing how many shares of stock or stock options is meaningless unless you know the number of outstanding shares. What matters is the percentage of the company the shares represent. Typically it would be in percent or basis points (hundredths of a percent). Some companies don’t volunteer this information unless you specifically ask, but it’s always a fair question, since without it, the offer of shares is almost meaningless. You need to understand the type of stock grant or stock option in detail, and what it means for your taxes, to know the likely value. In some cases, high taxes may prevent you from exercising, if you can’t sell the stock, so you could effectively be forced to walk away from the stock if you can't afford to exercise. ❗ If you do get an offer, you need to understand the value of the equity component. You need quite a bit of information to figure this out, and should just ask. If the company trusts you enough to be giving you an offer, and still doesn’t want to answer these questions about your offer, it’s a warning sign. (There are lots of otherarticles with more details about questions like this.) 🔹 Information that will help you weigh the offer might be: What percentage of the company do the shares represent? What set of shares was used to compute that percentage (i. e. is this really the percentage of all shares, or some subset)? What did the last round value the company at (i. e. the preferred share price times the total outstanding shares)? What is the most recent 409A valuation? When was it done, and will it be done again soon? Do you allow early exercise of my options? Are all employees on the same vesting schedule? Is there any acceleration of my vesting if the company is acquired? Do you have a policy regarding follow-on stock grants? Does the company have any repurchase right to vested shares? Finally, consider the common scenarios for exercising options, discussed below.
If you don’t yet have an offer, it’s important to negotiate firmly and fairly to get a good one. A guide like this can’t give you personal advice on what a reasonable offer is, as it depends greatly on your skills, the marketplace of candidates, what other offers you have, what the company can pay, what other candidates the company has found, and the company’s needs and situation. However, this section covers some basics of what to expect with offers, and tips on negotiating an offer.
🔹 Most companies, especially well-established ones, give roughly equal treatment to candidates. But even so, harder negotiators — or ones that are more sophisticated — can often get better offers. Many companies will give some flexibility during negotiations, letting you indicate whether you prefer higher salary or higher equity. Candidates with competing offers almost always have more leverage and get better offers. Salaries at startups are often a bit below what you’d get at an established company, since early on, cash is at a premium. For very early stage startups, risk is higher, offers can be more highly variable, and variation among companies will be greater, particularly on equity. The dominant factors determining equity are what funding stage a company is at, and your role. If no funding has been raised, large equity may be needed to get early team members to work for very little or for free. Once significant funding of an A round is in place, most people will take typical or moderately discounted salaries. Startups with seed funding lie somewhere in between.
🔹 🌪 There are no hard and fast rules, but for post-series A startups in Silicon Valley , this table, based on the one by Babak Nivi, gives rough ballparks equity levels that many think are reasonable. These would usually be restricted stock or stock options with standard 4-year vesting schedule. These apply if each of these roles were hired just after an A round and are also being paid a salary (i. e. not already founders or hired before the A round). The upper ranges would be for highly desired candidates with strong track records. CEO: 5–10% COO: 2–5% VP: 1–2% Independent board member: 1% Director: 0.4–1.25% Lead Engineer 0.5–1% Senior Engineer: 0.33–0.66% Manager or Junior Engineer: 0.2–0.33% For post-series B startups , equity numbers would be much lower. How much lower will depend significantly on size of the team and valuation of the company. Seed-funded startups would be higher than the above numbers, sometimes much higher if there is little funding. 🔹 One of the best sources of information about what is reasonable for a given company and candidate is to look at offers from companies with similar profiles on AngelList. A 2014 survey of AngelList job postings by Leo Polovets has excellent summary of equity levels for the first few dozen hires at these early-stage startups. For engineers in Silicon Valley, the highest (not typical) equity levels were: Hire #1: up to 2%–3% Hires #2 through #5: up to 1%–2% Hires #6 and #7: up to 0.5%–1% Hires #8 through #14: up to 0.4%–0.8% Hires #15 through #19: up to 0.3%–0.7% Hires #21 through #27: up to 0.25%–0.6% Hires #28 through #34: up to 0.25%–0.5% Keep in mind much of the above information is heavily biased toward early-stage Silicon Valley tech startups, not companies as a whole across the country.
Companies will always ask you what you want for compensation. And you should always be cautious about answering. If you name a number that you’ll accept, you can be fairly sure the company won’t exceed it, at least not by much. Some argue that a good tactic in negotiating is to start higher than you will be willing to accept, so that the other party can “win” by negotiating you down a little bit. Keep in mind, this is just a suggested tactic by some, and not a hard and fast rule. If you are inexperienced and are unsure what a fair offer should look like, avoid saying exactly what you want for compensation very early in discussions. It’s common for hiring managers or recruiters to ask this early in the process, just to take advantage of candidates that don’t have a good sense of their own worth. Tell them you want to focus on the opportunity as a whole and your ability to contribute before discussing numbers. Ask them to give you a fair offer once they understand your worth to the company. If you are experienced and know your value, it’s often in your interest to state what sort of compensation and role you are looking for to anchor expectations. You might even share your expectations early in the process, so you don’t waste each other’s time. Discuss what your compensation might be like in the future. No one can promise you future equity, salary, or bonuses, but it should be possible to agree what they will look like if you have outstanding performance and the company has money. If you’re coming from an established company to a startup, you may be asked to take a salary cut. This is reasonable, but it’s wise to discuss explicitly how much it is, and when that will be changed up front. For example, you might take 25% below your previous salary, but there can be an agreement that this will be corrected if your performance is strong and the company gets funding. 🔹 Always negotiate non-compensation aspects before agreeing to an offer. If you want a specific role, title, opportunity, visa sponsorship, special treatment (like working from home), or have timing constraints about when you can join, negotiate these early, not late in the process. ❗ Get all agreements in writing, if they are not in your offer letter. 🔹 If you’re going to be a very early employee, consider asking for a restricted stock grant instead of stock options, and a cash bonus equal to the tax on those options. This costs the company a little extra paperwork (legal costs), but then you won’t have to pay to exercise, and then if you file an 83(b) election, you’re simplifying life, eliminating the AMT issues of ISOs and maximizing chances of qualifying for long-term capital gains tax. Getting multiple offers is always in your interest. If you have competing offers, sharing the competing offers can be helpful, if they are good. However, dragging out negotiations excessively so you can “shop around” an offer to other companies is considered bad form by some people, so it’s thoughtful to be judicious, and try to time things at once to the extent possible. Reneging on offers: Do not accept an offer verbally or in writing unless you’re ready to stand by your word. In practice, occasionally people do accept an offer and then renege. In the United States, this is considered a very bad thing to do, especially if it put the company in a difficult position (e. g. they declined another key candidate based on your acceptance), and may hurt your reputation in unexpected ways later. Robby Grossman gives a good overview of equity compensation and negotiation suggestions.
Once you have stock options, what are the possible scenarios for exercise? Generally, you should consider these possibilities: Exercise and hold : You can write the company a check and pay any taxes on the spread. You are then a stockholder, with a stock certificate that may have value in the future. As discussed above, you may do this: “Early”, even immediately upon grant Before vesting (if early exercise is available to you) Sometime after vesting, or - After leaving the company, as long as the exercise window is open. 🔸 Recall that often the window closes soon after you leave a company, e. g. 90 days after termination. Wait until acquisition : If the company is acquired for a large multiple of the exercise price, you may then use your options to buy valuable stock. However, as discussed, your shares could be worth next to nothing unless the sale price exceeds the liquidation overhang, since preferred stock is paid up first. 🔸 Secondary market : As discussed above, in some cases it’s possible to exercise and sell the stock in a private company directly to a private party. But this generally requires some cooperation from the company and is not something you can always count on. Cashless exercise : In the event of an IPO, a broker can allow you to exercise all of your vested options and immediately sell a portion of them into the public market, removing the need for cash up front to exercise and pay taxes. 🔹 Note that some of these scenarios may require significant cash up front, so it makes sense to do the math early. If you are in a tight spot, where you may lose valuable options altogether because you don’t have the cash to exercise, it’s worth exploring each of the scenarios above, or combinations, such exercising and then selling a portion to pay taxes. In addition, there are a few funds or individual investors who may be able to front you the cash to exercise or pay taxes in return for an agreement to share profits. Alex MacCaw’s guide includes a few more detailed example scenarios.
This section covers a few kinds of documents you’re likely to see. It’s not exhaustive, as titles and details vary.
When you are considering your offer from the company, make sure you have all of the documents. These should be: Your offer letter, which will detail salary, benefits, and equity compensation. An Employee Innovations Agreement or Proprietary Information and Inventions Assignment Agreement or similar, which concerns intellectual property. In addition, if you have equity compensation, at some point — possibly weeks or months after you’ve joined — you should get a Summary of Stock Grant or Notice of Stock Option Grant, or similar document, detailing your grant of stock or options, along with all details such as number of shares, type of options, grant date, vesting commencement date, and vesting schedule. It will come with several other documents, which may be exhibits to that agreement: Stock Option Agreement Stock Plan (sometimes called a Stock Option Plan, or Stock Award Plan, or Equity Incentive Plan) Code Section 409A Waiver and Release (sometimes this is part of the Stock Option Agreement) If you are exercising your options you should also see paperwork to assist with that purchase: Exercise Agreement. Instructions and template for early exercise and 83(b) election, if applicable. End of year tax documents 📥 You should receive a form 3921 or 3922 from your company if you exercised ISO options during the year.
These are scenarios that can be very costly for you if you aren’t aware of them.
❗ Do not accept an offer of stock or shares without also asking for the exact number of total shares (or, equivalently, getting the exact percentage of the company those shares represent). It’s quite common for some companies to give offers of stock or options and tell you only the number of shares. Without the percentage, the number of shares is meaningless. Not telling you is a deeply unfair practice. A company that refuses to tell you even when you’re ready to sign an offer is likely giving you a very poor deal. 🔸 If you’re looking at an offer, work out whether you can and should early exercise, and what the cost to exercise and tax will be, before accepting the offer. ❗ If you join a company right as it raises a new round, and don’t have the chance to exercise right away, they may potentially issue you the options with the low strike price, but the 409A of the stock will have gone up. This means you won’t be able to early exercise without a large tax bill. In fact, it might not be financially feasible for you to exercise at all. 🔸 Vesting starts on a vesting commencement date. Sometimes stock option paperwork won’t reach you for months after you join a company, since it needs to be written by the lawyers and approved by the board of directors. This usually isn’t a big problem, but do discuss it to make sure the vesting commencement date will reflect the true start date of when you joined the company, not when the stock option is granted. 🔸 If you’re going to early exercise, consider it like any investment. Don’t believe every projection about the value of the company you hear. Founders will tell you the best-case scenario. Remember, most startups fail. Do your research and ask others’ opinions about likely outcomes for the company. ❗ It may not be common, but some companies retain a right to repurchase (take back) vested shares. It’s simple enough to ask, “Does the company have any repurchase right to vested shares?” (Note repurchasing unvested shares that were purchased via early exercise is different, and helps you). If you don't want to ask, the fair market value repurchase right should be included in the documents you are being asked to sign or acknowledge that you have read and understand. (Skype had a complexcontroversy related to this). You might find a repurchase right for vested shares in the Plan itself, the Stock Option Agreement, the Exercise Agreement, the Bylaws, the Certificate of Incorporation or any other stockholder agreement.
Here are some costly, common errors to watch out for on the taxation side.
❗ If you are going to file an 83(b) election, it must be within 30 days of stock grant or option exercise. Note that often law firms will take a while to send you papers, so you might only have a week or two. If you miss this window, it could potentially have giant tax consequences, and is essentially an irrevocable mistake — it’s one deadline the IRS won’t extend. When you file, get documentation of from the post office, delivery confirmation, and include a self-addressed stamped envelope for the IRS to send you a return receipt. (Some people are so concerned about this they even ask a friend to go with them to the post office as a witness!) ❗ One of the most serious tax-related mistakes you can make is to exercise ISOs without first knowing the impact on your AMT obligations. If there is a large spread between strike price and 409A value, you are potentially on the hook for a very large tax bill — even if you can’t sell the stock. This has pushed people into bankruptcy. It also caused Congress to grant a one time forgiveness, but the odds of that happening again are very low. Understand this topic and talk to a professional if you exercise ISOs. ❗ If you exercise your options, and your income had been consulting, not employment (1099, not W-2), you will be subject to the self-employment tax in addition to income tax. Self employment taxes consist of both the employer and the employee side of FICA. Meaning, you will owe the Social Security tax component, 6.2%, up to the FICA wage base, and you will owe the Hospital Insurance component, 2.9% on all of the income. 🔸 Thoughtfully decide when to exercise options. As discussed, if you wait until the company is doing really well, or when you are leaving, it can have serious downsides.
David Weekly, An Introduction to Stock & Options for the Tech Entrepreneur or Startup Employee Anonymous, What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining A Unicorn Investopedia, Employee Stock Options: Definitions and Key Concepts Dan Shapiro, Vesting is a hack Guy Kawasaki, Nine Questions to Ask a Startup Alex MacCaw, An Engineer’s Guide to Stock Options Robby Grossman, Negotiating Your Startup Job Offer Julia Evans, Things you should know about stock options before negotiating an offer Joe Wallin, RSUs vs. Restricted Stock vs. Stock Options Joshua Levy and Joe Wallin, The Problem With Immediately Exercisable ISOs Barry Kramer, The Tax Law that is (Unintentionally) Hammering Silicon Valley Employees Startup Law Blog, Incentive Stock Options vs. Nonqualified Stock Options Startup Law Blog, Top 6 Reasons To Grant NQOs Over ISOs Investopedia, How Restricted Stock And RSUs Are Taxed Investopedia, Introduction To Incentive Stock Options Forbes, Ten Tax Tips For Stock Options Wealthfront, When Should You Exercise Your Stock Options? Wealthfront, The 14 Crucial Questions about Stock Options Leo Polovets, Valuing Employee Options Leo Polovets, Analyzing AngelList Job Postings, Part 2: Salary and Equity Benchmarks Inc, 5 Questions You Should Ask Before Accepting a Startup Job Offer GigaOm, 5 Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make with Stock Options Wealthfront, How Do Stock Options and RSUs Differ? Mary Russell, Startup Equity Standards: A Guide for Employees Mary Russell, Can the Company Take Back My Vested Shares? Fairmark, AMT and Long-Term Capital Gain NCEO, Stock Options and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) Accelerated Vesting, What Is An 83(b) Election and When Do I Make It? Fenwick, Section 409A Valuations and Stock Option Grants for Start-up Technology and Life Science Companies Venture Hacks, How to make a cap table VentureBeat, Beware the trappings of liquidation preference Orrick, Startup Forms: Equity Compensation Matthew Bartus, Option Grants: Fully Diluted or Issued and Outstanding Babak Nivi, The Option Pool Shuffle (and table of equity ranges) 🔨 TLDR Stock Options and OwnYourVenture are simulators illustrating equity calculations and dilution.
This guide and all associated comments and discussion do not constitute legal or tax advice in any respect. No reader should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information presented herein without seeking the advice of counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. The author(s) expressly disclaim all liability in respect of any actions taken or not taken based on any contents of this guide or associated content.
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The De-Nerding Wanstrath and Preston-Werner want GitHub to be used for collaborations that have nothing to do with software.
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The De-Nerding Wanstrath and Preston-Werner want GitHub to be used for collaborations that have nothing to do with software.
It's "Beer:30," and Tom Preston-Werner is standing at a lectern in the vast San Francisco loft where GitHub makes its home. Before him, arrayed on a mashed-up assortment of chairs and couches or topping up a glass of whiskey at the overstocked house bar, are maybe 40 GitHub employees; another 44 around the world are watching a live feed. Preston-Werner has the tired eyes and untended facial hair of a new father, and the low-def biceps of a software engineer. Atop his head sits a mammoth banana-yellow foam-rubber cowboy hat.
The weekly gathering begins with Preston-Werner welcoming a few new employees. The co-founder and CEO then runs through a series of shout-outs to folks who have finished off pieces of code designed either to improve the GitHub site or to make it work better for clients. Then Preston-Werner takes a few minutes to wax philosophical. Taking a page from science writer Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From , he invokes the importance of "serendipitous interactions," the way powerful ideas can emerge from the most random collisions of people, thoughts, and artifacts. He urges his people--many of them recent hires, most of them in their early 30s, tops--to go out and cultivate new experience, to engage with the unknown. To underline his point, Preston-Werner reminds them that out of the investment the company received in July from Andreessen Horowitz, "about half of a percent" was picked up by Ron Conway, known in these parts as the godfather of Silicon Valley. Preston-Werner met Conway at a Y Combinator conference. Serendipity, indeed.
That venture round was worth $100 million. It valued this little five-year-old company at $750 million. As Preston-Werner speaks, between pulls on a beer, his giant foam chapeau jiggles gently.
As nerd endeavors go, GitHub is pretty much at the top of the food chain. What began as a private project with zero commercial intent has since emerged as one of the world's most--if not the most--powerful development tools for software. In just a few years, it has inserted itself at the center of the developer universe by making it easy for coders around the world to work together. If "software is eating the world," as Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen put it not long ago, GitHub is where much of that software gets its teeth.
The Andreessen Horowitz bet was the "biggest investment we've ever made," says Peter Levine, the partner who now sits on GitHub's board. It's not hard to see why the VC firm went for it: GitHub's momentum is astonishing. The company says it took 38 months to host its millionth project on the site; the five millionth came in just two months and 21 days. "I don't know a start-up that's not on GitHub," says Jay Sullivan, VP of products at Mozilla, maker of the Firefox Web browser. In other words, your next company, or parts of it, will be built here.
GitHub started as an effort by Preston-Werner and co-founder Chris Wanstrath to solve what Preston-Werner calls a "pain-in-the-ass problem": using something called Git, a version control system developed by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. A version control system is a tool that allows multiple coders to work on the same piece of software without losing track of the various changes made in each version or allowing the source code to be corrupted with lots of contradictory fixes. Torvalds built Git in reaction to the centralized structure of previous version control tools, which made it all but impossible for developers to work together independently. And though Torvalds's system "makes collaboration possible, it doesn't make it easy," says Preston-Werner. He sensed that Git could be "this superpowerful thing if only you could understand it."
Preston-Werner grew up in Dubuque, Iowa; his mom was a special-education teacher and his stepdad an engineer. (His biological father passed away when Tom was a kid.) Preston-Werner was the classic engineer-in-training: ripping apart pieces of gear his stepdad had lying around, hacking the family TRS-80 PC, studying How Things Work books. Eventually, just as the dot-com boom was cresting, he set sail for Harvey Mudd College, east of Los Angeles. After two years, he dropped out to be part of a company run by two fellow Mudd students; then he struck out on his own, first running a digital design firm, which taught him "all of the crap it takes to run a business--taxes, all that," then creating Gravatar, the technology that allows your avatar to follow you around the Web from site to site.
He sold Gravatar to Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, then paid off his credit card debt and enjoyed the first bit of breathing room he had known in several years. That's when he met Wanstrath, who is still only 27, six years younger than Preston-Werner. ("I started GitHub when I was really young, so I don't have a bio or anything," says Wanstrath, who looks like Gregg Allman run through a reverse aging machine. "My life story's pretty short.") The two were part of the growing crew of developers working in Ruby on Rails, a Web development framework that has itself become a major force. "One of the things we talked about in the Ruby community was Git," Wanstrath recalls, "at the time a very esoteric version control system." In October 2007, they set about improving Git, partly for fun and partly to make it more useful in their professional lives. They stayed in their day jobs and noodled at GitHub primarily at bars and coffee shops around the SoMa neighborhood. During this period, they picked up two other co-founders, PJ Hyett and Scott Chacon.
GitHub went live in February 2008, and soon Geoffrey Grosenbach, founder of PeepCode, essentially demanded to pay for the service. Suddenly, a dork pastime was a business, and by July, Preston-Werner was confident enough in it that he passed up the offer of a $300,000 bonus and stock options from Microsoft, which had acquired Powerset, the company he worked for at the time.
Today, a programmer in Dubai can drop a chunk of code in a "repository" on GitHub's site, post a description of his project and what kind of help he's looking for, and then watch as coders around the world dig in and contribute. If the software is open source (that is, free for the taking by anyone who wants it, with minimal restrictions), the "repo" is visible to all three million developers who work on GitHub. Depending on how interesting the idea is--it might be a simple feature for a website or an entire operating system--hundreds or even thousands of people might "fork," or copy, the code and start working to improve it. When a developer thinks he has cracked whatever problem or portion of the problem he was working on, he can make a "pull request" to the "maintainer" of the repository to review his suggested fixes. The maintainer integrates some or all of the new code as he sees fit.
GitHub is in some ways like Wikipedia--highly social, tapping into the human desire to contribute to a common goal. When so many brains are engaged at once, the process of development, refinement, and deployment is radically accelerated. Each revision should, in theory, make the code more powerful, get it closer to the point where it can be shipped as an element in a larger software product, whether open source or commercial. "If the barrier to collaboration is too high, then you're not gonna do it," Preston-Werner says. "But once you get that barrier low enough, once you pass a certain threshold, everybody's contributing." GitHub is adding users at the rate of 10,000 per weekday.
Unlike Wikipedia, however, GitHub has a business model. Essentially, GitHub offers programmers and companies a choice: They can use the collaborative platform for free as a place to build open-source software, or they can pay to use it behind a wall, where they can develop proprietary software that forms part of a commercial product or service. In the first case, your willingness to make your code available to everyone earns you the right to exploit the web of open-source coders working on the GitHub site. In the second, your company's developers work in private, using the collaborative features GitHub has built but not its distributed global network of talent.
"If you have code on GitHub but the whole world can't see it, then you're paying for it," says Preston-Werner. There are three payment tracks. One is a personal plan that costs as little as $7 a month. (The price is based on the number of repositories you have.) Then there is an organization plan, which has features for more sophisticated team management and starts at $25. The big-money option is the enterprise plan, which involves clients downloading a version of GitHub to live locally on their servers. It can cost millions of dollars a year. Enterprise clients include Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, LivingSocial, VMware, and Walmart. GitHub doesn't talk about how much these companies, specifically, are paying, but it has hundreds of thousands of paying customers between the website and the enterprise client base.
Levine, the Andreessen Horowitz partner, says his firm was first drawn to GitHub because it was "a growing enterprise with 300 percent year-over-year annualized growth--in a market that has been unchanged for a very long time." Sounding amazed even several months on, he marvels that the co-founders had gotten to "really interesting levels of profitability and revenue without a dime of outside funding and without even building out a sales organization--they're all engineers!"
A grown-up sales operation, Levine says, is just a first "tactical" step. He and the lads have big plans.
For survivors of Web 1.0, GitHub's offices bring the memories--or night sweats--flooding back. The 14,000-square-foot loft is rigged out with air hockey, Ping-Pong, a pool table, and an Xbox 360 (hooked up to side-by-side flat screens). There's a catered Thursday lunch (families are invited), a fridge full of microbrew, and a handmade wooden kegerator with an inlaid Octocat, GitHub's fantastical mutant mascot. Numerous side rooms house the many other toys designed to "optimize for happiness" for GitHub's 145 employees, who work whenever and wherever they like: electric guitars, an amp, and a full matched set of harmonicas in the jam room; a Skype chamber; a womb room with low lighting, a shag rug, and four egg chairs. There's a ladies' lounge with a pink, plasticized fainting couch, and the executive lounge, complete with faux-antique globe (which conceals a 16-year-old bottle of Lagavulin) and lots of manly leather. Actually, the whole office smells of leather--and revenue, which is what makes it so not like 1999.
If the term open-source software triggers some sort of narcolepsy neurotransmitter in you, you are not alone. It certainly did in me, to the extent that I thought about it at all. But the further I wandered in this world, the more wondrous I found it to be. Those of us who don't write code tend to be oblivious to the sheer labor involved in creating thousands or even millions of lines of the stuff, all of which have to function perfectly if a piece of software is to run bug free. A single project on GitHub can entail months or years of work and countless strings of dialogue among maintainers and coders hoping to contribute.
It's hypergranular work and has to be, not least because open-source software has become the bedrock of almost every company on earth. From Apple to Microsoft to the tiniest start-up, open source is part of the software stack--and many companies are built mostly from open source. And that, of course, is the point: Open source means a new business doesn't have to start from zero; it can pull down prefab pieces of software infrastructure for free, building only the bits it needs to bring its product to life. John Pettitt is founder and CEO of Repost. us, a service that allows news articles to be embedded as easily as video, and to carry their advertising and analytics along with them; earlier, he was the founder of Software, which became Beyond, and CyberSource, a credit card fraud detection company bought by Visa for $2 billion in 2010. Back in 1994, when Pettitt was starting Software, he says, "there was no e-commerce software, there was no e-commerce platform; I had to write my own credit card processing, I had to write my own storefront. Everything we had to do, we had to do from scratch, because there were none of the building blocks there." Pettitt built much of his new company on GitHub. "Today, you can sort of Lego things together in a way you never could before," he says. "And the corpus of information and tools is growing at a huge rate."
Those Legos form the skeletal system of almost every new company; the profitmaking intellectual-property layer is skin thin, sitting on top. "It's no different than having two-by-fours and electricity," Preston-Werner says. "If you have a ready-made Web server and Web framework, for example, that represents hundreds of thousands or millions of man-hours of work that you don't have to put into creating a product."
That is exactly why GitHub is formidable: It is at once a lumberyard and a workspace. Entrepreneurs on the site can find, or help develop, almost all of the open-source raw materials they need and set up their own closed place to integrate those materials with their IP. What's more, by simplifying Git, GitHub has turned a tool even serious coders found arcane into something useful to the "casual forker," in Wanstrath's term. "We want to enable people who don't know each other to collaborate on the same thing, toward the same goal," says Wanstrath. "This is all I want to do--forever."
There has been considerable rumbling lately that the Web is turning into a Monopoly board or mall, with a few big anchor stores and a bunch of rabble scrambling either to build on top of them or to find a survivable place in their shadows. "The openness that drove the Web and its richness are definitely under attack," says Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, the producer of industry-leading programming manuals, tech magazines, and conferences. "This happens again and again when something new comes on the scene. There's usually a huge sharing economy, with lots of innovation and lots of openness, and then some animals become 'more equal than others,' in Orwell's wonderful phrase, and then it tends to start to stagnate. But that impulse to create goes and bursts out somewhere else."
That somewhere, at least right now, would seem to be GitHub. In fact, it's possible to see GitHub as a new killer app for the Internet--a "mini Web," as Preston-Werner describes it, a place where networked minds actually build things together.
"The network effect is awesome," Preston-Werner says, sitting in the situation room, another ironically themed chamber (this one has a red Batphone to nowhere, a massive table in burled veneer, Big Boy Executive Chairs, and LED signs with the time zones of various GitHub outposts). "There are standards now based on GitHub, so everybody can come in to a new project and immediately know how to get the code, how to contribute code, how to review the code, how to submit issues to the code base. The more people do that, the stronger the effects and the gains from having a uniform, well-known, standardized system. And that's happening really, really rapidly."
That network effect gets reinforced in numerous ways. For example, a developer on GitHub acquires a social reputation, and that reputation becomes a way to find new, paying work; the network's role as a placement service helps it to grow still larger. The truly badass potential of GitHub, though, is that it isn't only a force multiplier for producing code but also for the generation of ideas--and for the products created from those ideas. As Preston-Werner says, projects hosted on GitHub will increasingly be "not just code, but anything that involves working on files on a computer: books, hardware projects, schematics for circuit boards, legal documents--anything that ends up in a digital format." This is already happening on the site, including projects for books (several coding manuals, for example, are being written on GitHub--including one about GitHub), hardware (OpenRov has the hardware design, software, and circuit schematics for its underwater robots on GitHub), and government (the U. S. and U. K. governments both work on the site).
Wanstrath, who handed the CEO title over to Preston-Werner in June and is an absolute geyser of GitHub zeal, agrees that as more people pile into the service, a shift is taking place: "Now we are finding that it's not just about the code; it's about, 'Hey, I want to work on this with you.' That's really eye-opening to us and gets everyone here superexcited. Working with someone else is just an awesome part of being alive. Creating art, creating tools, creating documents, doing homework, anything--it's not limited to programming. I don't see why musicians wouldn't want to work this way, for example."
In other words, as GitHub gets bigger, its power becomes less about the platform itself than about the people on it. One day in the GitHub offices, I ran into David ten Have, a New Zealander (and an Inc. cover subject in 2009). Ten Have is founder and CEO of Ponoko, a company focused on developing "the tools to enable digital fabrication." That means a system that could, one day, given a disassembled MP3 player, spec out each component, relay those specs to a 3-D printer, and have the printer produce all the pieces required for assembly by a nearby robot. Ten Have says, "GitHub makes this easier and faster, because it has a platform that enables the collaboration and, most important, the social norms to encourage people to look at the world collaboratively. That is fundamentally why GitHub is important beyond software: Ethos and attitude are transferable--into lawmaking, product design, manufacturing, biology, chemistry, dance, music, moviemaking, books, cooking. The list goes on."
And on. Which suggests that GitHub has only begun to grow--as a business, as a tool for business, and as a cultural force. "It's this huge ricochet effect," Wanstrath says, nearly manic with optimism. "We are this thing that people can step on, like an elevator, and then go shooting into space."