4 ms·
Tangential to this topic, but are there publicly traded companies that pay only in stocks? I'm curious to know if someone who gets paid only in stocks will come
by oarla 2y ago
Tangential to this topic, but are there publicly traded companies that pay only in stocks? I'm curious to know if someone who gets paid only in stocks will come out ahead in terms of taxes they owe than someone getting a comparable base pay.
- alemanek 2y agoI don’t see how it would be any different for US taxes. When publicly traded stock vests you are taxed on value of the stock at that time as income. So, it is treated the same as if you received it as cash compensation for tax purposes. I can’t speak to non-public company stock though.
- simantel 2y agoRSUs are taxed as income when they vest, it's only capital gains that are treated differently, so there wouldn't really be much benefit.
- s3graham 2y agoI remember hearing that it was possible at Netflix a long time ago, but I assume not any more.
- sulam 2y agoActually yes, but you won’t find engineers compensated that way. Usually it’s the CEO. They will take a symbolic base salary (often they will say $1 but HR forces it to be minimum wage behind the scenes) and get paid with stock. The trick is that it’s not RSUs, so not regular income. Instead it’s some form of option (I am not a tax attorney so I hesitate to state the type of option, there’s a variety of them that are used with different limitations). I believe they exercise 83(b) style to avoid AMT as well. As usual, you need to already have a lot of money to make this work. Tax avoidance is amazingly accessible once you have enough money. One trick I could do, but don’t — my bank gives me a line of credit based on assets they manage for me. I could quit my job and easily live for years just using the LoC and report zero income other than passive income from rebalancing trades (which are very minimal).