[ryanackley]

I can only speak from my experience but I've worked for two companies where the RSU's are structured as a pseudo-option.

Essentially, their price is set at FMV at the time of issuance. Since your net is zero at the time of issuance, you pay no taxes until there is a liquidity event and you can pay to cover.

Since this happened to me at two unrelated companies, I imagine it's a very common structure because it follows common sense and it works out great for everyone.

[FreakLegion]

It's not clear what you're describing, so hard to say whether it's common.

RSUs are stock. When you get them, you pay tax on their value at income rates. To deal with this you can delay actually getting the RSUs (e.g. double-trigger vesting, common), or the company itself can provide liquidity for taxes (e.g. Carta's net settlement program, not common).

Either way, 83(b) elections don't apply. They do apply to RSAs and options with early exercise, so maybe you had one of those.

My experience here is as a founder who's spent entirely too many hours with lawyers trying to engineer the most employee-friendly stock plan possible.

[ryanackley]

It's very much a grey area where you can't apply set of hard rules because each corp will do it a little differently. This is why OP needs to talk with a lawyer. I have four data points to your one over my career and I'm only counting the ones that ultimately paid out.

- Microsoft - straight straight stock award and options

- Atlassian - Pre-IPO straight stock options

- Company you never heard of 1 - RSU pseudo-options

- Company you never heard of 2 - RSU pseudo-options structured a little differently from company 1

[FreakLegion]

Repeat founder, double-digit data points.

Yes, companies can do arbitrarily weird things, like OpenAI's PPUs. No, these aren't common at startups, and there's no one way that beats all the others come tax time.

If you share the stock plan, or at least concrete details, we can get to the bottom of what you're describing. But understandably you aren't likely to do that.

[ryanackley]

My comments on my own experience were only relevant to my point of the OP should speak to a lawyer because every employee stock compensation plan is different. It feels like you are trying to discredit my personal experiences and I don't understand why. Do you not believe me or is your point that you know more about the topic than I do?

[FreakLegion]

Going back to the top, you wrote:

> Essentially, their price is set at FMV at the time of issuance. Since your net is zero at the time of issuance, you pay no taxes until there is a liquidity event and you can pay to cover.

I do believe the broad outcome you experienced, including having an employer file an 83(b) for you, which is rare but possible. I don't believe "RSU's [...] structured as a pseudo-option" is an accurate description of the mechanics involved. At a minimum, it's underspecified, and could lead someone else reading this to make a bad financial assumption down the road.

> is your point that you know more about the topic than I do?

I don't know, was that your point when you wrote "I have four data points to your one"? My only point is that that particular argument isn't a sound basis for dismissing the feedback you're getting, whether from me or from the others who've responded.

[ryanackley]

As I've already stated, the only point I was trying to make is that every stock compensation program is structured differently. This was in response to an article that tried to offer very specific financial advice. I've consistently advised to not follow random internet article's advice and speak to an attorney. Are you saying that is bad advice?

On the other hand, you seem hell-bent on winning a pointless argument about my own personal experiences. We both know it has nothing to do with bad financial advice since I've offered none except to speak to an attorney. Again, do you disagree with that advice?

Also, IANAL but my impression is that modern RSU's are a construct created by the legal community to get around and/or comply with the legalities of securities rules around employee compensation. There is not a singular approach on how they are structured. Your experiences may have been the result of lazy legal teams. I have no idea, but I don't doubt them.