Search results for: stock options

If you are in the process of awarding stock options to employees or service providers, do not forget that you need (among other things) board approval of all stock option grants. This is required by the corporate law of Delaware, Washington, and I imagine almost every state corporate law in the country. (In this post, IContinue reading “Stock Options: Don’t Forget Board Approval”

Now that the qualified small business stock 100% tax exclusion is going to be permanent, one question that will come up more often is: Qualified Small Business Stock Options Do optionees qualify? Meaning, do holders of compensatory stock options, who exercise those options and acquire stock–can they qualify for the Section 1202 qualified small business stockContinue reading “Qualified Small Business Stock Options”

First, let’s get the terminology of term sheets out of the way. Whether the document that outlines your deal is called a “term sheet,” a “memorandum of understanding” or a “letter of intent,” these terms mean nearly the same thing. We will use the “term sheet” in this article, but other words could easily beContinue reading “Term Sheets: Binding & Non-Binding”

By Evan Jensen and Joe Wallin and Jordan Rood If you are considering token sales and selling blockchain tokens in the U.S., you not only have to worry about the U.S. federal securities laws (see the latest from the SEC here), but also the laws of each state within the U.S. in which you sellContinue reading “Token Sales & The Risk Capital Test”

Broad-based employee stock ownership is one way to ensure that the wealth created in startups is widely shared by those who helped create the wealth. But broad-based stock ownership in private companies is thwarted by our tax code. Our tax code discourages the sharing of stock ownership among a company’s workers by taxing workers onContinue reading “Employee Stock Ownership: Empowering It Through A New Law”

By Nikki Piplani and Joe Wallin If you are a startup company founder, one of the first questions you will have will be about sharing equity with your early hires. Once you start asking, you will hear plenty of advice about this. You will hear— “Be generous”. You will also hear— “Worry about dilution”. The concernsContinue reading “How to Share Equity”

Warrants can be confusing from a tax point of view. There are a couple of reasons for this. But the primary reason is probably that how a warrant is taxed is driven. Warrants are by the factual circumstances under which it was issued. Was it issued as part of an investment purchase transaction? Or wasContinue reading “Warrants: The Tax Story”

Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) are not a good choice of equity compensation for a startup. RSUs work great for big public companies, like Amazon or Microsoft. And sometimes RSUs can work great for private companies. But it has to be a really unique private company for RSUs to make sense. Examples would be a company rampingContinue reading “RSUs: The Tax Problems in the Startup Context”

If you are thinking about starting an early stage tech company, one of the first things you will have to figure out is what type of legal entity to form. Fortunately, there are only a few choices available to you. Your choices are basically only 1 of the following 3 possibilities: an LLC taxed as aContinue reading “Tax Free Founder Stock”

What is Rule 701? And if you are a startup or emerging company, why do you need to know about it? Rule 701 is a federal securities law exemption for issuing equity to employees, contractors and advisors. You need a securities law exemption or registration statement in place to issue securities, and so finding and complyingContinue reading “Rule 701”