Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Employee stock options: a new government report, focuses on the issue of the Alternative Minimum Tax

Recently, the Congressional Research Service released a report on the tax issues surrounding the employee stock options, including the impact of the alternative minimum tax. As pointed out in the report, currently employs more than 10 million people will receive stock options as a form of compensation from their employers. In the face of the complexity of the tax system of stock Nifty option tips, in a significant portion of this population in the United States, not to tax planning basic for people affected by a review of the tax treatment alternative minimum tax and regular is vital.

Congressional Research Service (CRS)
CRS is a U.S. government agency that is in the Library of Congress. Its purpose is to provide a legal and policy analysis in the politically neutral member of both the House and Senate. The report provides an objective analysis of direct and important legal issues.

What is a stock option?
Granted by the employer to the employee in order to buy a certain number of shares at a price of employers are simply set, Stock option tips is a right. I receive additional compensation in the form of employee stock price increase the value of the stock rises. For example, if an employer X employees granted the right to purchase 1,000 shares at $ 10 per share, when the employee exercises the option, the stock price is $ 15, an individual on his or her base salary in the amount of $ 5,000 would have received compensation above, additional.

Two types of employee stock options
"And" modified "non-qualified options are" qualified in order to be labeled as such, you must meet certain requirements - There are basic types of only two of employee stock options Then, there are, because it has the result of adverse tax for employers that they issue, they have occurred less frequently. On the other hand, is easy with the problem of lack of these requirements, along with the more favorable tax treatment, non-qualified options are found more commonly for employers. Treatment alternative minimum tax because it significantly different between these two types of options, is very important as a first step that you have to know the kind of options that have received his or her employees.

Qualified stock options
Also qualified stock option, the label "Incentive Stock Options" the Internal Revenue Code, the cause of the date of exercise because there is no tax for the purposes of the tax "ISO image." Is known by regular staff, or to receive these I prefer. Capital gains tax rate is lower than the tax rate on ordinary income far, certain holding period requirements are met so long as an employee is in a significant tax savings, and as a result, long-term subsequent sale of these shares I will be for the treatment of a capital gain.

Non-qualified Stock option
Regular tax treatment of non-qualified stock options are far different than in the case of the ISO image. For this type of option, you will have a report on the W-2 income compensation for his or her share of the increase in the value of the employee on the day of the exercise. In addition to the regular tax rate applied (such as high current 35%) and also due tax FICA.
Comparison of regular tax treatment Example -
Tax savings when compared with nonqualifed option, even just to exercise ISO, using the example above of $ 5 thanks to the option thousand, may be part a very important gain of $ 5,000 $ 1,400 almost total might. Applied, which represents the difference between the ordinary income rate of as high as (7.65 percent FICA tax and income tax of 35%) and 42.65% of the capital gains tax rate of 15%.

Alternative minimum tax
Because it is one that is designed to put a damper on the good part of the regular tax treatment is found in the tax AMT, there is a price to be paid by their ISO image exercise. Items are tax preference, ISO is included in the income of the AMT's employees ("AMTI") is not tax regular should be paid to the exercise of the "spread" per share ($ 5 in this example) it is necessary. By including this amount, trigger, AMTI of employees is higher than his or her regular tax the AMT in this way potentially movement.

AMT planning of ISO image
In many cases, completely eliminated - and - The plan is to minimize the impact of the exercise of AMT ISO image is very simple. All one has to do is plan a little test for AMT, pre-exercise using the alternative amount of equity ISO. For example, in our example is $ 5,000, but it may be that it is not a preference item of tax in order to trigger the AMT enough while exercising the several years' worth of options once you will trigger the AMT . In this case, better to do all of them in one year instead of spreading the movement for several years it is a good employee.

Conclusion
There are 100,000 people there can do two things simple to avoid unnecessarily alternative minimum tax payments. First he or she is to understand the types of options have - or unmodified ISO. The second is that in order to calculate the effect of the AMT due to the exercise on the assumption that it is ISO, the amount of the different options, and then select the amount of work around the AMT. It is easy to do with simple and, as a result, it is able to save thousands of dollars in taxes.

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