Australia makes it incredibly difficult to give equity to your employees - they literally get double punished and it's often better for the employee not receive. The Australian Taxation Office will charge on receipt.

So you get 1% of the company and it's last investment round was $10M - Boom you get a $100,000 tax bill that year! Even though it's all only paper value.

Then if you do liquidate you're taxed again on the gain!

It's a huge problem and there are a lot of folks in the startup community trying to get it rectified.