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Accountants and politicians from Silicon Valley to Boston say they have been inundated with horror stories about shares purchased with employee options that workers once had hoped would make them rich. Instead, employees are saddled with big tax bills on profit they never saw.
Many of these workers now owe far more in taxes than their stock is worth. Former Cisco engineer Jeffrey Chou, 32, owes $2.5 million in taxes on company stock he purchased last year that has since withered in value. Chou figures that if he were to sell everything he owns, including the three-bedroom Foster City, Calif., townhouse that he shares with his wife and 8-month-old daughter, the family still could not pay the bill.
"I've lost sleep. I can't eat. I cannot pay, and we're ruined," Chou said.
Chou used incentive stock options to buy about 100,000 Cisco shares last year, paying 5 to 10 cents for each share. At the time, Cisco stock was trading between $60 and $70 a share. The difference between the price he paid and what the shares were worth -- about $6.9 million -- is taxable to him as profit, even though he never sold the shares.
Under the AMT, the first $175,000 of Chou's taxable income is taxed at a federal 26% rate, and any amount over that is taxed at 28%. Add in state taxes, and the bill is $2.5 million.
Chou could sell his shares now, but it wouldn't solve his problem. Cisco closed Thursday at $17.98 a share, which means that his stake is worth about $1.8 million. To pay his state and federal tax bill, he needs an additional $700,000.