In unlimited PTO schemes, you don’t earn/accrue any vacation time, so there’s not technically (nor legally) any to pay out. In some HR systems you’re basically

In unlimited PTO schemes, you don’t earn/accrue any vacation time, so there’s not technically (nor legally) any to pay out. In some HR systems you’re basically lazy-provisioned PTO time as it’s taken, so your amount of accrued PTO Time is always reconciled at the same amount of PTO time taken, leaving the available balance at zero. In other systems, you technically have zero days of PTO available, and when you use it your balance goes negative. Which gets zeroed out at the end of the year. In both cases, your PTO balance is never greater than zero, so you never have any unused days that would be subject to pay out.