sounds like she was punished for a disruptive innovation - "backdating of stock options exercise". Backdating of grant is cheating at the expense of shareholders whereis backdating of exercise - at the expense of IRS :)
I'm not sure what's the point of exercise backdating anyway - once the option is granted, the base price is fixed (and thus the base from which the tax is calculated), and all you can do is to change the resulting stock price, but the result of exercising at date X and holding to date Y and just exercising on date Y seem identical to me - you still have a stock priced at the spot price of date Y. Maybe some tax law details matter here - which would reinforce my point that it's too complex for its own good.
there are differences. For example, the profit from the grant date to the date of exercise is ordinary income - taxed at your bracket rate, while any profit coming from holding for longer than 1 year after exercise is at long-term capital gain - 15%.
smsm42|12 years ago
VladRussian2|12 years ago