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Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

Nobody cares about CEO salaries since their compensation is mostly stock grants and other stuff that is taxed at lower rates than wage income.

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tbh the thing that needs to get frozen is the vesting rate, stop giving CEOs contracts that encourage short term performance.

> Nobody cares about CEO salaries

Pretend that "salary" means "total compensation". The article covers stock too:

"freeze CEO pay and stock options and prevent stock sales for a year following any layoffs that exceed 5% of the workforce"

> mostly stock grants and other stuff that is taxed at lower rates than wage income

False. Income is income and it's taxed like income.

Now if you were to say that companies do funny stuff like hiring a company owned by the CEO for "consulting" services in order to funnel some of the CEO's compensation there, I'd believe you. But otherwise, no. Options, grants, perks - it's all W2 income and taxed that way.

Stock grants are taxed as wage income.

He probably means initial grant is taxed as wage income, and then if company succeeded, stock goes up, and he pays lower long term capital gain tax.

That would be the same if comp was paid in cash and then individually invested.

which somehow rarely/never happens. I suspect they may have some contractual obligations to hold on stocks, otherwise market may start panicking seeing CEO aggressively selling stocks.

> Nobody cares about CEO salaries

au contraire

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