Browse topics
Restricted stock units (RSUs)
The most common grant at public companies, plus PSUs. How vesting works, why the tax bill shows up before you sell, and whether to hold or sell the shares.
Rules & mechanics
How the grant actually works, step by step.
Taxation
What is taxed, and when, from grant to vest to exercise to sale.
How RSUs are taxed
RSUs are taxed as ordinary income the day they vest, then as capital gains on anything they earn after that. The trap is the gap between what your employer withholds and what you actually owe, and on a big year it pulls in surtaxes and quarterly payments too.
2026 RSU supplemental withholding rates
The flat supplemental rates that apply to your 2026 vests, and why they often under-withhold.
How RSUs are taxed at an IPO
An IPO can detonate years of double-trigger RSUs into one tax year. The income stacks, the withholding falls short, and the bill arrives while the stock is still locked up.
State tax on RSUs when you move states
Move to a no-tax state and your RSUs do not all become tax-free. The state where you worked while they vested can still tax that slice of the income.
Strategies
The decisions and frameworks that move the most money.
Sell at vesting or hold? The complete RSU decision
Sell at vesting unless you can name a real reason to hold. This is the whole decision, start to finish: the default, how to fund the tax, when holding earns its keep, how to diversify a pile you already have, and how to give shares away without paying gains.
How to value an RSU offer against base salary
Discount the equity for vesting risk and volatility before you compare two job offers.
Pitfalls
The mistakes and surprises that cost people the most.
Forms & reporting
The tax forms, the reporting, and worked examples.
How to read your W-2 and 1099-B for RSUs
The vesting income already sits in your W-2. The basis column on your 1099-B is the one you have to correct yourself, or the same dollars get taxed twice. Here is every number, where it lives, and a full vest worked start to finish.
RSU tax estimator
A simple way to estimate the tax on a vesting year and the shortfall your withholding leaves behind. The interactive version is on the way.
RSU withholding gap calculator
See how much your company under-withheld on a vest and what to set aside before April.
RSU sell-or-hold after-tax calculator
Compare selling at vest against holding, after tax and after concentration risk.
RSU net shares after withholding calculator
Estimate how many shares you actually keep once taxes are withheld at vest.
Case studies
Illustrative scenarios, start to finish.
Case study: a full vesting year at a public company
An engineer with a large RSU year, and the tax bill nobody warned her about.
Case study: the $14,000 double-tax RSU mistake
How a wrong 1099-B basis overcharged one filer, and how the amended return fixed it.
Case study: holding RSUs through an IPO
Double-trigger shares all settle at once, and a six-figure tax bill lands in one quarter.
Laid off with unvested RSUs on the table
What one worker actually kept after a layoff, and the one severance term that saved part of the pile.