S.576 – Encouraging Employee Ownership Act

congress.gov

17 points·theandrewbailey··7 comments

If they were serious about fixing startup stock options, they would:

- Eliminate the tax penalty you get if you exercise and keep the shares. This matters when the startup has not had an IPO or other liquidity event yet.

- Eliminate the IRS rule that incentive stock options must expire 60 days after you leave the company, or they lose their favorable tax treatment. Employers should have the discretion of giving employees a longer exercise window without losing the favorable tax treatment.

How exactly does this encourage employee ownership?

Given the sponsoring legislator, I would say this has nothing at all to do with encouraging worker-owned co-operatives, and instead is reducing reporting requirements for highly-paid executives.

Yet another one of those thinly disguised Orwellian titles.

Am I correctly interpreting this to means that I will only have to disclose the details of my compensation if it involves the sale of more than $10million in stock? This seems odd since, in a publicly traded company, it is already normal for executives to disclose compensation even well below the existing threshold of $5million.

The ones under $5m were probably disclosed becasue of their position more than their comp level: "The federal securities laws require clear, concise and understandable disclosure about compensation paid to CEOs, CFOs and certain other high-ranking executive officers of public companies." - http://edgar.sec.gov/answers/execomp.htm

Translation?

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