Financial Planning › Year-End Planning

Understand the core concepts in year-end or year-beginning tax planning for stock options, restricted stock/RSUs, and company stock. Topics in Part 2 include the alternative minimum tax, donations and gifts of stock, and capital gains strategies.

Learn about year-end ideas that apply to NQSOs and restricted stock/RSUs, and consider the impact of recent tax-rate changes.

We asked several financial advisors to provide their ideas on planning for year-end 2017 and beyond. Read their responses in their own words.

Learn about year-end planning for incentive stock options. This article includes ideas related to the alternative minimum tax.

In addition to being an effective form of generosity, gifting and/or donating shares can play a role in financial and tax planning for your equity compensation and company stock. This article presents the basics that you need to know when you are contemplating gifts or charitable donations of shares acquired from stock options, restricted stock/RSUs, or employee stock purchase plans.

The tax reductions of the past few years have brought both good and bad news for holders of incentive stock options. While you may have lower capital gains rates when you hold the shares long enough after exercise, it is harder to avoid the risks of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and to fully recover any AMT credit.

Updated annually, this PowerPoint presentation provides a timely overview of year-end financial-planning topics for stock compensation, including points of importance for employee education and for financial advisors.

Before the end of the year, review any ISO stock you are holding from earlier exercises and consider strategies for the following year. This article offers tips that apply every year. (Registration is required.)

By selling stock at a gain and then buying it back at the current price, you create a new...

Before you rush into exercising, you may want to do some calculations with potential future stock prices and tax rates. When you exercise earlier than necessary...

One strategy for minimizing AMT is to spread out the exercise of ISOs over...

Don't get tripped up by misunderstanding the tax rules. A common mistake is thinking that because you are selling a stock a capital gain lurks somewhere in the tax calculation...

The vesting and the sale are separate transactions and generate different types of income. Unless you made an 83(b) election to be taxed at grant, you were first taxed on the stock's value at vesting, which created ordinary income to you. With restricted stock units (RSUs), taxation occurs...

The grant itself has no impact. The compensation income generated from exercise or vesting can affect...

Tax considerations alone should not drive the choice of what stock you sell. For example, if you are holding appreciated company stock from a nonqualified stock option (NQSO) exercise or restricted stock vesting, you will be taxed on...

The value at vesting is all ordinary income. You have capital gain only for the increase in the stock price after vesting. Only this gain at sale can be...

Estimated-tax periods end on the last days of March, May, August, and December, with payments due by the 15th (or the next business day) of the following month. If you are paying estimated taxes, one strategy is that just after the start of an estimated-tax period you can...

Experts suggest several strategies for you to consider when you exercise ISOs and are concerned about triggering the alternative minimum tax. For example, near year-end or at the beginning of the year, you can...

When you are intermittently subject to the AMT, tax advisors suggest different planning ideas on shifting income and deductions. You have much less flexibility in your planning when you project paying AMT for the next several tax years. A basic plan is to...

Assume that the ISO exercise/hold or other parts of the AMT calculation will trigger AMT. A rule of thumb is...

As long as you sell the shares on or before December 31, you will...

Only in very limited circumstances, and your company needs to allow the rescission. The company would...

The IRS has provided guidance on the limited circumstances in which this is permitted. The Section 83(b) election is irrevocable unless you...