4 ms·

Maybe, maybe not. If so, maybe for a profit, maybe for a loss.

• lostlogin 4y ago
  How would you sell it for a loss?
  • srpm 4y ago
    The company can go public or be acquired at a lower price than it's currently (privately) valued.
  • nazka 4y ago
    I think he means sold for less than what it was on paper at the beginning. Like you start to work there and it’s valued at 200k but then time passes and now it’s at 30k.
  • Calavar 4y ago
    If you are accepting stock or stock options as compensation, that's generally coming in lieu of cash. Maybe you had an offer somewhere else with $30k more in salary, but you took this offer instead because the projected value of the stock made the total compensation higher. If you sell your stock after 4 years for $50k, you have taken a $70k loss relative to the other offer.
    • junofan 4y ago
      I’d love to count profits and losses relative to the best possible outcome in hindsight rather than the difference between what was spent to obtain an asset vs. what I got for it, but generally that’s not how the IRS sees things. A loss is not relative like that.
      • kodah 4y ago
        I'm not quite sure what you're saying, but RSUs are only taxable at vesting, and are taxed based on their market value at vesting. If the companies stock is worth less per unit, then you are taxed less.
  • tdy_err 4y ago
    Might not be the case here but, generally speaking, it's unfortunately not uncommon for stock option agreements to _require_ the recipient to exercise them at a certain time- in particular, when they leave the company who is granting them.
• rzazueta 4y ago
  Not a loss, per se, but if you were told you were receiving $200k in compensation as RSUs, and they drop in value to $50k, you could argue that's a $150k loss. It's absolutely a loss when you factor that in as compensation for the effort and labor your produced for them rather than co-onwership of the company, which RSUs decidedly do not represent.