Consider Your Options: Get the Most from Your Equity Compensation

Consider Your Options is the first book to offer plain language guidance on all the popular forms of equity compensation: stock grants, nonqualified options, incentive stock options and employee stock purchase plans. It tells how to avoid mistakes that can result in paying too much tax or otherwise failing to get the maximum investment return from these benefits. The book assumes no knowledge, explaining all the basic terminology and concepts from the ground up. Yet it also includes intermediate and advanced planning techniques, and information about cutting edge developments like reload options and the "early exercise" option plans that are popular with companies preparing to go public. You'll find a complete description of the section 83b election and tips for when it provides the greatest benefit.

In addition to complete coverage of the main topics, Consider Your Options includes guidance in related areas, such as stock valuation, estimated tax payments, and the dreaded alternative minimum tax (AMT). It's loaded with examples and tips, and tells where you can go for additional information. Read this book to get the most from your equity compensation.

Kaye Thomas is the Internet's best known tax explainer. He is author of the Fairmark Press Tax Guide for Investors, a web site recently selected by Money Magazine as one of the top 50 financial web sites, and also provides tax articles to several of the most popular sites on that list. A tax lawyer for nearly 20 years with vast experience counseling companies and individuals on equity compensation, he graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1980.