You're thinking of realized capital gains, not tax on the exercise/grant. I don't think there is a way to dodge the latter, and you can't take out a loan or pass down options you never exercised or stocks you were never granted.

You should probably read the filing. First, these aren’t options, it is straight up stock and it does vest.

Second, even if they were options, they definitely vest, otherwise Pichai would never gain control to be able to use them as collateral for a loan.

What you might be thinking is that they never get exercised, which is when the person uses the option to actually buy the share. But even that isn’t as straightforward as you seem to be making it out to be. The money to actually pay the interest on those loans and that is usually done by selling stock acquired this way. And then that income is almost certainly subject to AMT as well as other special taxes in California.

Those share options need excising, which probably incurs income tax on the allocation Vs strike price. Then the shares are only worth something to inheritors if that company is doing useful work for its customers over an extremely long period of time. That is likely far more valuable than the tax going towards paying off the interest for a year on some vote-buying spending that happened 20 years prior.

What do you think happens with loans?