Top 5 Mistakes With Employee Stock Options & How to Avoid Them
You can see the money now, can’t you? ???? ???? Your company’s hit their IPO, and you finally get to cash in on your stock options. ???????? You’ve received all the exciting emails from HR about what you’ll be able to do and when, and your trading window is about to start. To say […]
How to Use Incentive Stock Options: A Year-by-Year Approach
As a financial planner, ISO (incentive stock options) are my favorite. There are so many ways they can flexibly create wealth, especially when our clients have a combination of stock options that also include NSO (nonqualified stock options) and RSU (restricted stock units). When it comes to tax planning, ISO can be coordinated with […]
How to Avoid AMT on ISO Exercise With Lower Share Prices
It’s no secret at this point: We’re in a bear market, and stock prices are going down for A LOT of companies. ???????? And while we certainly hope there’s no serious long-term damage done to investor portfolios, there is a silver lining for tech employees with ISO (incentive stock options): Because the market has fallen […]
ISO Tax Treatment: a 12-Month Plan for Optimizing Incentive Stock Options
ISO tax treatment can be a headache. ???? Seriously. If you’ve got incentive stock options with your company, you’ll know they come with their own little set of tax rules. Alternative minimum tax? Minimum tax credit? The difference between stocks held more or less than one year? It can be a lot to remember, and […]
Selling Stock Options Strategy When You’re In the Highest Tax Bracket
Something interesting happens to a lot of our clients when their companies IPO: they find themselves stuck in the highest tax bracket, no matter what they do. For at least a year. Maybe even two. ????️ ????️ And that wouldn’t be so bad if the stocks that vested at the IPO and after that did […]
Incentive Stock Options Basics: Everything You Need to Know About ISO, Tax, & Selling
Incentive Stock Options Basics One of the biggest benefits of being a startup tech employee is stock options. It makes sense: the better the company does, the more opportunity you have to grow your personal wealth. As someone helping to grow the company, you have skin in the game, so you, the company’s founders, and […]
Get More For Your Money: Exercising Stock Options in a Private Company
Last month, we talked about the risk factors of the five types of equity available to employees in a private / pre-IPO company. As a review, those five things are: Qualified small business stock Long-term capital gains shares Unexercised ISO Unexercised NSO Restricted Stock Units (RSU) Each one carries its own unique cost, investment, and […]
When Stock Prices Fall: Selling ISO Exercised in January
Sometimes, stock prices fall. Yes, even after you exercised them at the beginning of the year with 100% confidence that the price would go up and you’d make a lot of money. ???? So when your investment plan with your stock options is going to poo ⬇️ ????, what do you do? When you exercised […]
Stock Options When You Quit: What Do You Do? How Do You Cash In?
So, you want to change jobs, eh? Career development is a noble quest, but a lot of tech and startup employees can feel stuck in their current companies. Especially when they’ve got stock options in a place that hasn’t been acquired or gone through an IPO yet. Because what are they supposed to do? Just […]