Better Tax Laws for Startups' Employee Options is being Legislated

In the US it's pretty much impossible to give your employees shares or options, unless you have tons of cash to help them pay taxes.

I paid something like $29,000 in taxes on some shares in the 90's. Never had enough capital gains to use all of the basis. When I emigrated to Canada I couldn't bring the entire loss over (I was forced to sell the shares at a very low value due to my partnership agreement), just what the values of those shares would be at that date (much less than the shares were at when I paid tax on them). I think I got something like an $8k capital loss in Canada.

So, I probably used a couple thousand of the basis on capital gains in the US, and used much of the other 8k in Canada. So the IRS got basically $19,000 of my money for free.

I'd say it needs improvement.