On Sunday, the Redskins backup rookie quarterback, Kirk Cousins, put up thirty-eight points on the Cleveland Browns. Cousins was a fourth round draft pick from Michigan State, whose selection was roundly blasted by Skins fans as unnecessary and wasteful after giving up so much in draft picks to select RGIII. Cousins has got to be singing, "How do you like me now?" after more than three hundred yards passing.
I won't say I told you so, but I told you so. Before the beginning of the season, I posted that I was more excited about having Cousins than RGIII. After the preseason, that seemed justified. Yes, you might argue that I was just a little bit wrong about the importance of RGIII, but why bring up such unpleasantness at Christmas?
2012 is the strangest year for tax planning in my twenty-three years in practice. For the first time in my memory, and my kids tell me I go back to the dinosaur era, we are advising people to pay more in taxes. Why? Because, the Grinch has stolen most of our tax breaks for 2013. For this post, I will concentrate on how the Grinch is affecting your non-qualified stock options.
Non-qualified stock options are options to purchase your employer's stock at a set price for a set period of time. I used the term, non-qualified, to refer to options that are not incentive stock options. Yes, all options are supposed to be incentives, but the term, incentive, has a special meaning when applied to stock options.
Incentive stock options are intended to be exercised, and then you hold the resulting stock for more than one year. Incentive options have some special tax aspects regarding alternative minimum tax and capital gains rates. I may cover these in a future post. The Grinch is stealing your tax benefits for these as well.
Non-qualified options are simply any options that aren't incentive options. For instance, let's assume you have the option to buy 100 shares of your employer at $100 per share, and that you can exercise those options anytime in 2012 or 2013. Let's also assume that the current stock price is $125 per share. If you exercise these options and sell the stock immediately in what is known as a cashless exercise, you will have income of $25 per share or $2,500, which is the difference between the price at which you sold the stock and the exercise price.
Because the options are non-qualified, the income is considered compensation income just like any other salary and is subject to all of the normal tax withholding, including Social Security and Medicare. The income will be recorded on your year-end W-2 tax statement as well. If you had the choice between exercising the options in the current year or next year, normally I would advise you to choose the next year to defer taxes as long as possible.
However, 2012 is different. The Grinch will be visiting us in 2013 and stealing many of our tax breaks we have enjoyed since 2001. The first goodie he has stolen from under our Christmas tree is our low tax rates. Rates are going back to 2001 levels effective January 1, 2013. If you household income is over $200K, expect to feel some pain, maybe not gunshot wound level pain, but a dull toothache kind.
Second, the Grinch is giving us a gift we'd like to return, but he'll give us no return receipt. There is a new .9% Medicare surcharge on earned income over $250K for married taxpayers ($200K for those smart enough to be single). So if you exercise your non-qualified options in 2013, and your income is over the threshold either before the options income or after it, you will be subject to this new tax.
Finally, the Grinch is stealing the current alternative minimum tax (AMT) exemption, brackets, and rates. He is replacing them with the 2001 version of the AMT. AMT is a tax within a tax. It takes your regular taxable income, throws out many of your deductions, and then applies a two tiered rate structure to your AMT taxable income. You then get to pay either your regular tax or your AMT, whichever is higher.
AMT tends to afflict taxpayers making from $200K to about $500K. It has been a pain in the ass since the late 1970's, but it didn't affect many taxpayers until around the year 2000. Up through 2001, the tax had never been indexed for inflation. Finally, the math caught up to six figure earners and many of us incurred substantial AMT tax balances. Since 2001, Congress has engaged in an annual ritual temporarily indexing the AMT brackets and rates to mitigate some of the effects of inflation on the AMT. In 2013, the party ends. In fact, it really ended in 2012, but most Congress watchers expect one more round of indexing before year end.
So, if you have stock options, qualified or non-qualified, exercise them in 2012. Sell your virgin daughters to pay the additional taxes if necessary. You have eleven shopping days left before the Grinch takes your money or your daughters.
Recently, constitutional scholars discovered some e-mail messages from the 1780's that suggest the second amendment has a typo. Tommie Jefferson thumb typed a draft of the amendment to Jimmie Madison using his iPhone 5. When he typed, "right to bare arms," Apple's auto correct feature turned it into "right to bear arms." So sun dresses are constitutionally protected. Assault rifles are not.
The next time you see a woman wearing something hideous in public, remember that thousands upon thousands of American soldiers fought and died for her right to make poor fashion choices.
As always, thanks for reading. For real tax and accounting advice, visit our main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com. Also, please like the "How to Screw Up Your Small Business" Facebook page. I post a screw up of the day there.
Until next time, let's do it to them before they do it to us.
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