Comment by bnjmn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bnjmn | Hacker News Reader

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Here's the statement I plan to read to my representatives:

I live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I work for a small startup of less than 30 employees.

Three years ago I left a large, publicly traded tech company to take this job, because of the potential I saw in the work the startup was doing.

I took a significant pay cut when I joined the startup, a decision that was justifiable only because of the distant future value of the incentive stock options that the startup promised me.

It is my understanding that the current tax bills on the floors of the house and the senate would tax these options when they first vest, long before I could possibly sell them to cover my tax bill.

If I am wrong about this, I would appreciate any clarification you can provide, ideally written into the text of the bills themselves.

If my understanding is correct, I honestly don't know how my startup, or other small companies like it, will be able to compete with wealthy public tech companies as we try to hire new employees in an already extremely competitive market.

I struggle to understand how draining talent from the most innovative small tech companies can possibly be construed as a good thing for our economy.

Thank you for your time.

It may be an interesting exercise to think of how this can be turned "against" you. If you wanted to play armchair politics, you could spin this:

- Highly paid engineer walked away from a 6 figure salary

- Takes a job at a small company where he gets equity that could potentially be worth millions.

- Complains that he may have to pay taxes on a significant portion of his compensation.

Put those together, and you have someone probably still making more than double the national median wage complaining that his favorite tax loophole is being closed. Meanwhile the local plumber / school teacher / single mom is struggling to make ends meet; why shouldn't you pay your fair share so that they can get a tax break?

FWIW, this is just an exercise, I'm not saying this is true. Just something to keep in mind though, that many (most?) of the people on HN are being paid significantly higher than most Americans, and complaining that their stock is being taxed differently isn't going to garner much support.

I think the "easy" rebuttal to your third point/counterargument is that's not what's actually happening: you're being forced to pay taxes on vapor. No one is objecting to paying tax when stock is sold; that's normal and reasonable. It's just crazy to expect people to pay taxes on something that cannot be sold.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback!

Maloney is a Democrat, though, and will likely vote against the tax bill with or without your say so. Both of our senators are also Democrats. Not that it wouldn't be helpful to provide them with ammunition against the tax bill, just saying that this is not really going to move the needle much in terms of actual votes.

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