Browse topics
Hybrids and other equity
SARs, phantom stock, and other cash-settled or appreciation-based awards, plus secondary sales and tender offers. The equity that does not fit the standard grant types.
Rules & mechanics
How the grant actually works, step by step.
How SARs and phantom stock work
SARs and phantom stock pay you cash that tracks the share price without making you buy a single share. Both feel like equity right up until the tax bill, which looks nothing like equity.
Secondary sales and tender offers for private shares
How employees turn private stock into cash before an IPO, what the price really means, what it taxes, and how much you should actually sell.
Taxation
What is taxed, and when, from grant to vest to exercise to sale.
Strategies
The decisions and frameworks that move the most money.
When cash-settled equity beats real shares
Real shares win on taxes almost every time. So why take SARs or phantom stock, and once you have them, how do you plan a payout you mostly cannot control?
How equity comp is split in a divorce
Unvested grants are often marital property, dividing them is its own tax problem, and the real cost is the time.
Forms & reporting
The tax forms, the reporting, and worked examples.
Case studies
Illustrative scenarios, start to finish.
A phantom stock payout at a private company
An executive watched her phantom units pay out at a sale, then learned the whole check was wages. A walk through what landed, what was withheld, and what she owed.
Selling private shares in a tender offer: taxes and mechanics
An engineer sold a slice of his startup stock in a tender offer before the IPO. Here is how the window worked, what it taxed, and how he decided how much to sell.
Case study: a SAR payout at a private company
Cash settled at a tender offer, taxed entirely as ordinary income, with a withholding gap that landed in April.