[bcrl]

Other countries only allow shares of publicly traded companies to be added to tax shelter savings accounts. This seems like a reasonably fair way to prevent people with significant resources from taking advantage of the system in ways the general public cannot. Someone getting returns in excess of hundreds of thousands of percent should be able to afford paying a few percent in tax to help pay for the infrastructure society has provided to make success in industry possible.

[enahs-sf]

Forgive my ignorance but I was under the impression this was startup founders standard operating procedure.

1. Form a C Corp

2. Grant founders shares at $0.000x/share

3. Early exercise all of said shares at basically nothing

4. Make 83(b) election to IRS

5. Take advantage of long term cap gains and qsbs

I’m sure plenty of folks in this forum have done similar things, the only difference is mr. thiel put it into his Roth account, essentially betting on himself and it paid off big time.

[s1artibartfast]

The difference is 83b defers tax until you sell, while IRAs don't allow you to buy assets from yourself

[walshemj]

The UK doesn't there are a number of schemes that allow this.

Everyone in the private company I work for has EMI options that trigger on change of control.