> It probably isn't a wash.
What's the meaning of this odd Americanism? When is something 'a wash'?
First off, the rates on individuals
> differ from those on corporations. If taxed at the top marginal
> individual rate of 39.6, there is more revenue on the individual
> side. Some of this also might be taxable under the payroll tax,
> though don't hold me to that (2.9% for Medicare applies to
> uncapped wage & salary). Second, either side will have
> different alternative ways of reducing their exposure.
This whole thing sounds economically rather complicated. When do corps get to write off stock options? When they are issued, or when they are excercised? What happens about stock options which are lost by employees (which, from casual reading, seems to be a common occurance when employees are forced out of Microsoft)? How much lower, on average, are salaries to compensate for stock options?
Personally, I've always thought of stock options as an employee discipline thing - you're locked into the job, and they're used to excuse a lower salary - rather than a tax evasion thing. The article in question sounds like a stab at populism - examining corps as robber barons, rather than understanding modern corporate power as discipline.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844