[harryh]

So what you're saying is if you give an employee say, 10k shares at $2/share strike price you give them a 20k signing bonus?

Then the idea is that they pay, say, 6k in taxes on the bonus. Then they write you a check for 20k to early exercise the options and file and 83b.

So they're out 6k in taxes but on the other hand they've early exercised so they actually own the stock (subject to 4 years of vesting).

1) What happens if they can't afford the 6k in taxes?

2) What if they don't want to early exercise? Can they just keep the bonus in cash?

3) What if they leave the company in less than 4 years. Do they have to pay the pro-rated portion of the bonus back?

[cj]

1) Company could offer more than exercise cost, so it also covers any tax liability. If I'm not mistaken, this is how [Google|Facebook|Apple] RSUs work.

2) Cash bonus would be dependent on employe exercising the grant.. it probably shouldn't be presented as a bonus, so the employee doesn't have to select between the bonus or the stock. If they prefer a cash heavy compensation package, that should probably be discussed in isolation from a stock purchase reimbursement / bonus.

3) This is a tough question. If an employee leaves before 4 years, the company has to buy the restricted stock back from the employee. Perhaps there's a way to legally require the employee to return the buyback check to the company.

[spinlock]

It used to be common to loan the employee the money to purchase the stock. This avoids both the tax and early termination problems.

[AndrewKemendo]

Well this is exactly what we are doing! In our case however we are probably going to sequentially forgive the debt, which would look like real income and as long as we space it out the tax burden is slow. All of the transactions are paper anyway so this also keeps our cash flow the same.

What good is equity as compensation if you have to purchase the stock after all?!

[SeoxyS]

A loan of the exercise price + 40% to cover taxes sounds like the best of all worlds to me.

[prostoalex]

> If I'm not mistaken, this is how [Google|Facebook|Apple] RSUs work.

For FB specifically, they just pre-sell 40% of issued RSUs. The amount then shows up on paystub as income tax withheld.

There's no extra money to be had on top of the RSU grant - for a global company it would be unfair to treat employees at high tax burden locations differently from employees in low tax burden countries.