Stock Options: Estate, Tax, and Financial Planning (2011)

The unique features of stock options have spawned numerous questions over how and when they are taxed, valued, and recorded for financial statement purposes. Disputes also arise over what government entity has jurisdiction to tax them, who has a legitimate claim to them in death, divorce, and bankruptcy, and whether they can be transferred at all. Until now and the publication of Stock Options: Estate, Tax, and Financial Planning, the market has not had such comprehensive cradle-to-grave coverage of the tax, estate, and financial issues that can confront a person with stock options. The author was inspired to write the book after her client for whom she had just prepared a 20-year cash flow projection, died suddenly of cancer at the age of 57. He left behind his wife who was a schoolteacher, his two college-bound children -- and four million dollars of unexercised stock options. None of his advisors knew what to do. This able group included his money manager, his lawyer, trust officer, and the human resources administrator at his job. Instead, they all looked to the author, his CPA. There were so many questions and so few answers. Stock Options: Estate, Tax, and Financial Planning provides the answers. In addition, it raises many more questions for which there are no clear answers. It is a comprehensive guide for estate, tax, and financial planners who advise clients about employee stock options, human resources personnel who are presumed to know all about these important benefits, and for insiders who must know these things. Finally, it is also for the inquisitive-minded individual who wants to maximize the value of his or her stock options in a number of different life circumstances. This book offers a comprehensive source of up-to-date information about the major tax and financial areas affecting stock options. It gives practical advice for dealing with options through its many examples, planning notes, and forms designed for a quick understanding and easy application of the principles. The subject areas span many professional disciplines. Therefore, most practitioners will be familiar with some, but certainly not all of the areas. Nonetheless, clients with stock options will surely encounter the majority of these issues at some time during their life. For many of these clients, stock options are their largest and most important asset. Thus, the Guide fills the educational gaps for the practitioner and his or her client where answers are to be had. And where questions remain unresolved, it offers a useful starting point in research.