Incentive Stock Option Planning Program

We specialize in helping tech professionals in San Francisco get the most out of their equity compensation and incentive stock options (ISOs). We’ve developed the Stock Option Planning Program to help you maximize the value you receive from your options and avoid potential pitfalls along the way. Your personal situation, including cash flow needs, level of tax burden, and risk capacity, will all help us develop a strategy and design an action plan to maximize your upside and handle tax and diversification considerations in a savvy way.

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The Process

1)      Your Circumstances: Through conversation, your personal goals, constraints, and opportunities will build the foundation for our planning.

2)      Your Data: Your past tax returns, wage summary, and equity plan statements will inform the development of potential strategies.

3)      Your Scenarios: We’ll model incentive stock option exercise scenarios in light of your current needs, career plans, and your start-up's current valuation, growth, and available tender offers or share buy-back windows.

4)      Your Path Forward: We will walk with you through decision-making and move through the exercise process with you as you execute the plan.

Liquidity Issues & Tender Offers

Share buy-backs and tender offers may provide you with windows of liquidity when you can cash in on the value of your options. You may also be considering an exercise without immediate liquidity in light of the potential upside and the future tax advantages of long-term capital gains rates. We’ll help you decide whether to participate in an offer or exercise without immediate liquidity.

Alternative Minimum Tax

We don’t think the Alternative Minimum Tax should scare you. With a clear exercise plan and an organized process for tracking your AMT credits and stock basis, we’ll make sure you avoid the AMT when possible, manage tax brackets, and make the most of your credit in years you aren’t subject to the AMT.

Leaving my startup

Are you in the process of leaving your start-up and curious about the ramifications and potential tax consequences of exercising your options as you change employers? We’ll run federal and California tax projections for you and walk you through the decisions so you know exactly where you stand before you leave.

Pre-Ipo Planning

We’ve helped people navigate IPOs at Coinbase, Pinterest, Asana, Affirm, Rivian, Lucid, and many more. As an employee holding stock options and RSUs you maybe be considering your option planning in light of a potential IPO. We’ll dive into the logistics of exercising and balancing diversification issues and tax risks.