Wow! You work at Twitter! Or Facebook, or the next great San Francisco Bay Area startup! That’s exciting. But when the hype settles down and hopefully the startup starts to pay off, you may be granted stock options. You may not even know what a stock option is, but you’ll need to learn quickly about what they are, how to execute them, and I’d like to introduce you to everybody’s favorite uncle: Uncle Sam.
Uncle Sam loves the San Francisco Bay Area (as does Sacramento), because we in San Francisco and in the whole Bay Area are one of the true centers of entrepreneurship. Our businesses create incredible value for the economy, and much of that wealth is exercised in the form of stock grants or stock options. If you are Google employee #3, you may have been compensated with stock options, but when exercised those little bits of digital paper can be very valuable and can generate some nasty tax complications. So look before you leap: understand your situation before you execute.
San Francisco CPA Firm for Stock Option Advisory
We act as a CPA for Stock Option Advisory on many occasions. This may not be the employee, but rather it may be a startup forming a company who needs advise on how to set up their startup. Often times, the employer and employees can work together (at least conceptually) at the beginning, so that the stock option compensation system works for everybody. So we at Safe Harbor can help
- The San Francisco employee who has been granted a stock option;
- The business founder(s) who are starting a startup and need to understand how this all works.
- Small companies that are ready to take the next step in corporate organization and issue stock.
Whatever your need, stock options can be a very important compensation tool. A CPA firm that specializes in stock options – especially one in the San Francisco Bay Area – can be a needed complement to your team. We love Uncle Sam as much as you do, but we really like him when he is paid as little as he is legally entitled to. He can print money, after all, and you cannot.