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Re:Don’t Tax Options and RSUs Upon Vesting by pc86 on Monday November 13, 2017 @01:40PM (#15688824)
We need to draw a distinction between "startups" and "small businesses." Options and RSUs, as a vehicle for engineering talent, is largely a VC/SV thing. I work on the east coast in a non-NYC city, and options/RSUs simply do not exist, even at what most people would consider tech/software companies, even the ones with venture investment. Certainly, Bill's Hardware down the street does not offer stock options.

By and large, taxation of options and RSU at any point will have negligible impact on the SMB sector of the US economy. It's probably very, very damaging for startups if your definition of startup matches Paul Graham's, but if your definition of startup is "new business that happens to use JavaScript for something" this is unlikely to change anything about your day to day competitiveness.

Re:Don’t Tax Options and RSUs Upon Vesting by logfromblammo on Monday November 13, 2017 @01:59PM (#15689063)
And that's why Silicon Valley is on its own for this one.

It hasn't loaned me its political power for anything that matters to me, and so for this issue that impacts me not at all, I will not be returning any favors.

The collapse of the 2002 bubble hurt everywhere else far more deeply than SV, with a more painful recovery, so I see anything that might curb irrationally exuberant investment in companies that are not likely to ever benefit rust belt economies as a good thing.

Furthermore, I am more in favor of simpler employee incentives that do not force people to invest where they work. At the income level of a typical tech employee outside of SV and NYC, any investments should likely be buy-and-ignore in a robot-managed index fund. I don't want all my net worth to be tied up in my employer, especially when we have no contract, no real control over its business strategy or tactics, and I can be fired at will. If you want to pay me $X, pay me $X.