[carlosdp]

This is if you exercise at/after the IPO. If you can afford it, you can exercise early, get taxed on that earlier value, and then it will be mostly capital gains. Higher risk, cause it could end up being worth nil, but higher reward.

[jypepin]

yes, there are a lot of other situations, but this is the general one and I was explaining the situation where why the person would not be paying capital gain tax

[carlosdp]

Yea, I was just adding on to your comment to shed light on why ISOs can be good in certain situations.