> Taking less salary for years with the potential for an IPO is a lot less lucrative when your payout goes down by 50% due to taxes.

Since we're talking about an increase in the top marginal income tax rates, sacrificing regular income for a chance of a big capital gains payout would actually be more, not less attractive, unless this was pared with treating capital gains as normal income—and even then, would probably remain more attractive if also coupled to provisions allowing spreading income spikes (whether due to one-time capital events or otherwise) out via advance and/or deferred recognition options, which is probably necessary for basic fairness if capital gains are treated as regular income—and actually that helps with fairness for some regular income patterns as well.

The top marginal tax rate is already 37% and kicks in at $510,300 for a single person. So if your payout is a million, say, then what happens is that your "less salary" (let's pretend you've slaved away for a pittance of, say, $200k) is taxed normally, and then the first $300 or so of your imagined payout is also taxed normally, but the last bit, the amount over $510,300, is taxed at an additional 13% over what happens today.

So if by "a lot less lucrative" you meant "13% less lucrative," then okay.