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Podcast included! Taxation for internationally mobile employees can be extremely complex. Part 2 looks at specific scenarios, withholding taxes, and tax equalization.

A down market provides ideal circumstances for negotiating a larger stake of equity compensation as part of your pay package. With companies looking to conserve cash and find effective ways to recruit, retain, and motivate executives and key employees, your interest in this type of compensation may be well received. This article explores the possibilities you may want to consider if this opportunity arises.

Podcast included! You may find a gap between what you expect from your equity compensation and what you receive. Often the problem stems from the complexity of the related documents and rules. Learn about them, and understand why you must focus on conflicting or inconsistent provisions.

Podcast included! Part 1 looked at the problems of conflicting or inconsistent provisions among different documents. Part 2 discusses which existing documents and rules nonfounder executives must consider when negotiating for equity compensation during the early (pre-public) stages of a company's development and growth.

Your company just gave you a stock option grant, or your existing options are underwater. You wonder: "What are my stock options worth? Are they worth anything at all?" Learn about different valuation methods, including Black-Scholes.

Particularly in high-tech startup companies, it is more important to know what percentage of the company a stock option grant represents than how many shares you get.

Stock options often cannot be exercised until they are vested, and then they are profitable only after...

Guidelines about grant sizes vary among industries and corporate peer groups. Most companies...

Usually companies keep this information private...

Amid concerns about the backdating and springloading of stock options, companies have tightened their procedures for approving stock grants and their timing. After grants are properly approved, companies are now...

If your skills are in great demand, employers may...

Your company's flexibility depends on economic conditions, the stage of its development, trends in your industry, and the limitations in the company's stock plans. Any choice offered can depend on whether it is a negotiated grant at hire, an alternative to a cash bonus, or a new approach for your company's equity grants. Employee-choice programs are a nascent trend, with companies such as...

Not usually. An exception would occur if your...

Noncompetes are used by many companies...

Backdating is a dangerous practice. Courts have imposed prison sentences on corporate executives found guilty of backdating violations. For good reasons, companies now avoid making option grants that are based on the stock price of any date earlier than the date of grant...

While it is too early to know exactly how stock grant practices may change because of impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, there are some lessons from what happened in past big market drops...

A clawback provision can appear in your employment agreement, stock grant agreement, or stock plan. If it is triggered, you must surrender to the company...

Clawback forfeiture provisions usually do not appear in stock plans. Typically, they are included in stock grant agreements, which tend to be not publicly available. This makes data on clawbacks hard to find. However, a survey...

The tax treatment that applies when you have a clawback provision or when a clawback is enforced is an evolving area that is gradually being clarified...

At some companies, international assignments are often accompanied by what is commonly called an "equalization package." To give you an incentive to accept the international assignment, the company agrees to...

Unless you are a senior executive of a public company who can compare grants at peer companies by looking at their proxy statements, or unless your company is willing to open its option records to you, you may never know whether you and your co-workers have been treated equally...