Executives with Equity Compensation

A financial foundation engineered from first principles, with a strategic layer played like a chess master's game on top of it. The first absorbs the shocks; the second plays the moves you control, several moves ahead, and never gets forced into a poor one.

What are you optimizing for each year, and in the final year? And which combination of moves across all of your grants reaches both?

Moving to a no-income-tax state before you exercise or vest doesn't end California's claim. The state sources equity income to where you did the work, and the period it measures depends on the type of award.

A single line in the tax code quietly converts part of a large ISO grant into non-qualified options the moment it crosses a threshold. Most people never see it happen until the tax treatment they were counting on isn't there.

An ISO exercise produces no regular income tax, and that is exactly why it catches people. The alternative minimum tax counts what the regular tax ignores, and it can arrive with no cash to pay it.

Your RSUs vested, your employer withheld tax, and you still owe five figures in April. It isn't a mistake. It's the predictable result of a withholding rule that under-collects for high earners, and it's entirely plannable.

Four award types look alike on an offer letter but are taxed on entirely different mechanics. This is a map of where the decisions live, including the elections, the deadlines and the California layer.