The choice of when to exercise your incentive stock options can be a difficult one, with serious implications for financial planning and taxes. When your company is still pre-IPO, that opens up an entirely separate set of concerns that you may need to be aware of. The issues associated with […]
Incentive Stock Options
7 Things You Should Know About Incentive Stock Options
Incentive stock options (ISOs) are a form of compensation distributed by a company to their employees. Typically, companies use ISOs as a vehicle to retain top employees, reward specific milestones or successes or as an incentive when hiring new employees. ISOs can be a lucrative long-term compensation benefit, particularly if […]
How to Use the AMT Credit Effectively in Retirement
If you have incentive stock options, you’ve likely heard of — and perhaps already paid — the alternative minimum tax. This is the tax due in the years you exercise and hold incentive stock options, or ISOs. You might also be entitled to an AMT tax credit if that’s the […]
5 Reasons Why You Might Want a Disqualifying Disposition for Your Incentive Stock Options
Want to pay less in taxes from the sale of your incentive stock options? While you can’t completely avoid taxes on a profit when you exercise and sell shares from ISOs, you can potentially earn the right to pay at long-term capital gains tax rates — which are lower than […]
Why Waiting to Exercise Your Incentive Stock Options May Increase The AMT
Incentive stock options are unique in that the longer you wait to exercise, the costlier it may be to exercise and hold your shares. That’s not because exercising the ISOs cost more, as that price is fixed, but because the cost of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) may be higher. […]
How and Why to Exercise Your ISOs Early in the Calendar Year
Ready to exercise your incentive stock options (ISOs)? Then you have many strategies to consider for how and when to take the next steps. Potential plans to implement include exercising well before the ISOs are set to expire, exercising as expiration nears, or exercising on a rolling basis (so you […]
