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Comment by jnordwick | Hacker News Reader

Most employees get hit by the AMT and the step up in basis when exercising their incentive employee stock options, and from just skimming the bill, I don't see how that is prevented.

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If the income is deferred, I would imagine that it wouldn't apply to AMT calculations. It'd be nice for that language to be explicit though.

Regardless, the Obama Administration "strongly opposes" the bill in its current form since it would "increase the Federal deficit by $1 billion over the next 10 years."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislati...

I wonder how often bills with this "strong opposition" still end up getting passed anyway.

The federal budget was $3.8 trillion (with a "t") last year, and the deficit was $438 billion. Increasing the annual deficit by $100 million[1], or 0.02%, seems like a non-issue.

[1] $1 billion over 10 years is $100 million per year.

Agreed — it's a pretty weak reason to "strongly oppose" a bill, which is why I'm wondering how likely it would be for the Administration to change their position. Like, what percentage of the time do they issue a statement in strong opposition but then end up passing the bill anyway?

You should make this a top level comment. The fact that it's opposed by the Whitehouse has got to hugely lessen its chances of becoming law. That's a highly relevant data point.

I was looking for that language as well - I expected to see that "gains" from exercising options do not count towards AMT, and that related taxes are completely deferred until the time when the investment becomes liquid (or 7 years?).

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