Leap year can make things complicated. For example, if you use a daily accrual rate for some purpose related to stock compensation, such as calculating a pro-rata payout, a tax allocation for a mobile employee, or expense accruals, you have to remember to add a day to your calculation once every four years. Personally, I think it would be easier if we handled leap year the same way we handle the transition from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time: everyone just set their calendar back 24 hours. Rather than doing this on the last day of February, I think it would be best to do it on the last Sunday in February, so that the “fall back” always occurs on a weekend.
In a slightly belated celebration of Leap Day, I have a few tidbits related to leap years and tax holding periods.
If a holding period for tax purposes spans February 29, this adds an extra day to the holding period. For example, if a taxpayer buys stock on January 15, 2015, the stock must be held for 365 days, through January 15, 2016 for the sale to qualify for long-term capital gains treatment. But if stock is purchased a year later, on January 15, 2016, the stock has to be held for 366 days, until January 15, 2017, to qualify for long-term capital gains treatment. The same concept applies in the case of the statutory ISO and ESPP holding periods–see my blog entry “Leap Year and ISOs,” (June 23, 2009).
Even trickier, if stock is purchased on February 28 of the year prior to a leap year, it still has to be held until March 1 of the following year for the sale to qualify for capital gains treatment. This is because the IRS treats the holding period as starting on the day after the purchase. Stock purchased on February 28 in a non-leap year has a holding period that starts on March 1, which means that even with the extra day in February in the year after the purchase, the stock still has to be held until March 1. See the Fairmark Press article, “Capital Gains and Leap Year,” February 26, 2008.
Ditto if stock is purchased on either February 28 or February 29 of a leap year. In the case of stock purchased on February 28, the holding period will start on February 29. But there won’t be a February 29 in the following year, so the taxpayer will have to hold the stock until March 1. And if stock is purchased on February 29, the holding period starts on March 1. Interesting how none of these rules seem to work in the taxpayer’s favor.
The moral of the story: if long-term capital gains treatment is important to you, it’s not a bad idea to give yourself an extra day just to be safe–especially if there’s a leap year involved.
Our first discussion of cost-basis reporting was posted back in 2009, yet, here we are, still talking about it half a decade later.
Why Am I Still Blathering On About This?
This is still a topic for discussion because the rules have changed again this year. For any shares acquired on or after January 1, 2014, brokers are no longer allowed to voluntarily include the compensation income recognized in connection with the option or award under which the stock was acquired in the cost basis reported on the Form 1099-B issued for the sale. This means that for any shares employees acquired under their options and awards this year, the cost basis reported on Form 1099-B is likely to be too low. Employees will have to report an adjustment on Form 8949 when they file their tax return to correct their capital gain/loss for the underreported basis.
Let’s Review
When you sell stock, your cost basis in the stock is subtracted from your net sale proceeds to determine what your capital gain or loss is. For shares acquired under stock awards, your cost basis is the amount you paid for the stock, plus any compensation income recognized in connection with the acquisition (in the case of NQSOs and restricted/units) or disposition (in the case of ISOs and ESPPs) of the stock.
Brokers have been required to report a cost basis on Form 1099-B since 2011. Previously, brokers were allowed to voluntarily include the compensation income recognized in connection with the award in the reported cost basis. This was good because it meant that sometimes the basis reported on Form 1099-B was correct, making it easy in those instances for employees to report their sales on Schedule D and calculate the correct capital gain/loss. But it was also bad because there was no way to tell, when looking at Form 1099-B, whether the reported basis included the compensation income or not. The end result was a lot of confusion and possibly a lot of over-reported capital gains.
Where Are We Now
You might think the IRS would fix this problem by making brokers indicate whether the basis reported on Form 1099-B includes the compensation income. But you would be wrong. Instead, the IRS decided that the basis reported on Form 1099-B should only be the purchase price. This way everyone knows what basis is reported on Form 1099-B. It’s the wrong basis in most cases, but at least we know what it is. That’s a step in the right direction, I guess.
To make things more confusing, for shares acquired before January 1, 2014, brokers can still voluntarily include the compensation income in the basis reported on Form 1099-B (and still can’t indicate on the form if they’ve done this). And, for option grants, brokers can treat the grant date as the acquisition date. I think that most brokers are planning to apply the new rules to everything, regardless of when the shares were acquired/option was granted, but you should check with your brokers to verify what they are doing.
What This Means for Employers
Forms 1099-B will be issued around mid-February. You should plan on distributing some educational material to employees to explain this. The NASPP webcast “The New Forms 1099-B Are Coming! Are You Ready?” will provide more information on the topic. In addition, we’ve updated all the sample forms, flow charts, and FAQs in our Cost-Basis Reporting Portal for the new rules and the 2014 forms. New this year, we’ve added Cost Basis Cheat Sheets, featuring flow charts explaining how to calculate the adjusted cost basis for most types of stock awards.
The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has released a discussion draft of proposed legislation that could dramatically change the tax treatment of stock compensation as we know it. Here is a summary of the proposals.
No More Deferrals of Compensation
The good news is that Section 409A would be eliminated; I still don’t fully understand that section of the tax code and maybe if I just wait things out a bit, I won’t have to. But the bad news is that it would no longer be permissible to defer taxation of stock compensation beyond vesting. Instead, all awards would be taxed when transferable or no longer subject to a substantial risk of forfeiture.
This would eliminate all elective deferral programs for RSUs and PSUs. The NASPP has data showing that those programs aren’t very common, so you probably don’t care so much about that. On the other hand, according to our data, about 50% of you are going to be very concerned about what this will do to your awards that provide for accelerated or continued vesting upon retirement. In addition to FICA, these awards would be subject to federal income tax when the award holder is eligible to retire. Say goodbye to your good friends the rule of administrative convenience and the lag method (and the FICA short-term deferral rule)–those rules are only available when the award hasn’t yet been subject to income tax. This could make acceleration/continuation of vesting for retirees something we all just fondly remember.
As drafted, this proposal would also apply to stock options, so that they too would be subject to tax upon vest (the draft doesn’t say anything about repealing Section 422, so I assume that ISOs would escape unscathed). But one practitioner who knows about these things expressed confidence that there would be some sort of exception carved out for stock options. I have to agree–I don’t have data to support this, but I strongly suspect that the US government gets a lot more tax revenue by taxing options when they are exercised, rather than at vest (and that someone is going to figure this out before the whole thing becomes law).
Section 162(m) Also Targeted
The proposal also calls for the elimination of the exception for performance-based compensation under Section 162(m). This means that both stock options and performance awards would no longer be exempt from the deduction limitation. At first you might think this is a relief because now you won’t have to understand Section 162(m) either. I hate to rain on your parade, but this is going to make the tax accounting and diluted EPS calculations significantly more complex for options and performance awards granted to the execs subject to this limitation.
And that’s a bummer, because the proposal says that once someone becomes subject to the 162(m) limitation, they will remain subject to it for the duration of their employment. Eventually, you could have significantly more than five execs that are subject to 162(m). That’s right–five execs. The proposal would make the CFO once again subject to 162(m), a change that’s probably long overdue.
And There’s More
The proposal would also change ordinary income tax rates, change how capital gains and dividends are taxed, and eliminate the dreaded AMT (making the CEP exam just a little bit easier). And those are just the changes that would impact stock compensation directly. There is a long list of other changes that will impact how you, your employees, and your employer are taxed. This memo by PwC has a great summary of the entire discussion draft. In addition, we are in the process of recording a podcast with Bill Dunn of PwC on the draft–look for it soon in the NASPP podcasts available on iTunes.
When Does This All Happen?
That’s a very good question. This proposal has a long ways to go on a road that is likely to be riddled with compromise. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t even been introduced yet as a bill in the House. It has to be passed by both the House and the Senate and then signed into law by the President. So I wouldn’t throw out those articles you’ve saved on Sections 409A and 162(m) and the AMT just yet. It’s hard to say what, if anything, will come of this.
Two weeks ago, I discussed the Medicare tax rate hike that goes into effect next year (“The Supreme Court and Stock Compenation,” August 7). Today I discuss some additional considerations relating to that tax increase and other possible tax increases for 2013.
A Busier Second Half of the Year
Any time there is a tax rate increase on the horizon, tax advisors get on their soap boxes about accelerating transactions to take advantage of the current lower rates. In our world, that translates to employees possibly exercising their NQSOs this year, rather than waiting until next year or later.
Of course, here we’re only talking about an additional .9% in tax. Generally, tax considerations shouldn’t drive investment decisions and I would think that this is especially the case when we’re taking about such a small increase–on a gain of $1 million, that’s only $9,000 in additional tax. If you think the stock is going to increase in value, I’m not sure it’s worth it to exercise early just to save the $9K. But Jenn Namazi, the other half of the NASPP Blog, tells me that she has heard several advisors (including some very large, well-respected firms) suggesting this investment/tax strategy, so what do I know?
More Sales
In addition to NQSO exercises, you also may find more of your insiders selling stock in the latter half of this year. This is because, in addition to the rate hike I described last week, a completely new Medicare tax also goes into effect next year. This is a 3.8% tax that applies only to “unearned income” in excess of the same $200,000/$250,000 threshold. Unearned income sounds like something bad, like you it is income you don’t deserve, but it really just refers to income you didn’t earn by toiling away for your employer. Primarily, this is income from investments, such as capital gains realized on the sales of stock.
3.8% is a little more significant (actually about four times as significant) than .9% (it amounts to $38,000 on a gain of $1 million). On top of that, if Congress doesn’t take action to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, the long-term capital gains rate is going to increase from 15% to 20%. Consequently, long-term capital gains that would currently be taxed at 15% might be taxed as high as 23.8% next year. That’s the sort of tax rate increase that I expect to be more likely to change investment strategies.
Of course, there’s no tax withholding on long-term capital gains and this applies to the new Medicare supplement as well. There’s also no matching company payment, so the company doesn’t have any reporting or withholding obligations with respect to this tax.
But, where the sellers are executives, the sales could have other impacts to the company. At a minimum, the sales have to be reported for Section 16 purposes. And where executives have Rule 10b5-1 plans set up, you might find a flurry of changes to increase sales under these plans, which most companies would need to review/approve.
Shareholder optics are also a consideration; having several executives (or all executives) suddenly appear to be dumping company stock around year-end may not be the best thing for the company’s stock price. Your investor relations group may want to get out in front of this one.
Back in November, the IRS proposed additional regulations on cost-basis reporting. These regulations primarily relate to the third phase of implementation of the reporting requirements, which applies to options and debt securities. But there are a few areas in the regulations that are of interest to stock plan professionals.
You Win Some: Sale Proceeds to Be Reported Net of Fees
It will come as a relief to anyone that has reviewed any of my cost-basis reporting flow charts to know that the regulations would require all brokers to deduct the transaction fees from the sale proceeds reported on Form 1099-B. In my humble opinion, this is a requirement that is long overdue. The fees are usually a small amount, sometimes immaterial, but trying to explain how they are included in the tax return when the broker doesn’t deduct them from the sale proceeds (or worse, when you don’t know whether the broker has deducted them) is almost an insurmountable challenge. If the IRS adopts these regulations and requires all brokers to report the sale price net of fees, I’ll be able to reduce my 6039 flow charts from 14 pages down to a mere five pages.
You Lose Some (or The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same)
Readers of prior NASPP blog entries (see “Four Questions to Ask Your Brokers,” Nov. 30, 2010) know that the current regulations, which have been in effect since January 1, 2011, allow brokers to exclude the compensation component from the reported cost basis until 2013 for shares acquired under stock compensation arrangements. The newly proposed regs not only retain this exclusion but remove the limitation that it is only available until 2013. Thus, it doesn’t look like brokers will be required to report the full basis of shares acquired under stock compensation arrangements for the foreseeable future. I guess the silver lining here is that now you will get more than two years of use out of all those great educational materials you’ve been creating to explain this to your employees.
The regulations state that the IRS is contemplating requiring brokers to indicate whether the shares sold were acquired under a compensatory arrangement on the Form 1099-B (and in transfer statements). Frankly, I’m not really sure this helps much. For most employees, even executives, the only stock of their employer that they own was acquired through compensatory arrangements. When they sell their employer’s stock, I think they probably already know that the stock was acquired through a compensatory arrangement.
The proposed regs also state that the IRS will update the instructions to Schedule D and Form 8949 to clarify that the basis for shares acquired under compensatory arrangements may be incorrect. I have to admit that I’m not confident this is going to help much, especially given how clear the instructions included with Forms 3921 and 3922 are.
I will be hauling my cost-basis reporting soapbox to the February Silicon Valley and Sacramento chapter meetings, where Larry Reynolds of E*TRADE and I will provide a just-in-time overview of cost basis and the new Forms 1099-B. I hope to see you there!
Get in the Game If you haven’t been playing the NASPP Question of the Week Challenge, now is a great time to join the game. A new challenge just started and you have until Feb 3 to answer all the questions posted in January (after that, you only have a week to answer each question). All the cool kids are doing it–sign up today.
NASPP “To Do” List We have so much going on here at the NASPP that it can be hard to keep track of it all, so I keep an ongoing “to do” list for you here in my blog.
With the new Forms 1099-B that will be issued for the first time next year, the process for reporting sales of stock on Schedule D has changed significantly. In today’s blog, I take a look at the new procedures.
But First, New Form 8949
The biggest change to the process is that taxpayers now have to report every sale of stock on Form 8949, which was introduced for the first time this year. The instructions to the form will be included in the instructions to Schedule D, which were not available as of one minute ago, when I started writing this blog entry. Luckily, however, Andrew Schwartz of BNY Mellon Shareowners Services managed to snag a draft of the instructions from the IRS and generously provided it to me. I also had the benefit of listening to Andrew explain how Form 8949 is used when we presented on cost-basis reporting at the NASPP Conference (you can enjoy this benefit as well by purchasing the audio from our session).
Form 8949 will include information that used to be reported on Schedule D, including the description of the property that was sold (column a), the date acquired (column c), and the date sold (column d). It will also include information that will still be reported on Schedule D, including the sales price (column e on both forms), cost basis (column f), and any adjustments to the gain or loss (column g). Finally, it includes a code that explains the reason for the adjustment to the gain or loss (column b).
When reporting sales of stock, employees will report the cost basis as reported on Form 1099-B in column f. If this basis isn’t correct (see the Nov 18, 2010 blog entry “Pave the Way for Cost Basis Reporting Now“), then employees will report code B in column b and will report an adjustment in column g. If there is no basis reported on the Form 1099-B, then employees will report the correct basis in column f, but won’t report anything in column b (code) or column g (adjustments).
Multiple Forms 8949
Employees will fill out separate Forms 8949 for the following transactions:
Sales for which a basis is reported on Form 1099-B
Sales for which a basis is NOT reported on Form 1099-B
Sales for which a 1099-B is not issued (e.g., if your broker relies on Rev. Proc. 2002-50 to not issue a Form 1099-B for same-day sales).
Form 8949 has two parts, one for short-term capital gains and one for long-term gains, so employees could have to include up to six of these forms with their tax return.
What About Schedule D?
Rather than reporting each individual sale on Schedule D, this form is now just an aggregate of the individual transactions reported on Form 8949. This is where employees will subtract their cost basis and any adjustments from their sale price to determine their actual gain, which is reported in column h.
Things Could Change
Note that today’s blog entry is based on a draft of the instructions. I don’t expect any significant changes in the final instructions, but you just never know with the IRS.
NASPP “To Do” List We have so much going on here at the NASPP that it can be hard to keep track of it all, so I keep an ongoing “to do” list for you here in my blog.
Today we have a fabulous installment in our Ask the Experts series of webcasts, “Tax Reporting for Stock Compensation.” I thought I’d shake things up and take a look at tax filing from the employee’s perspective.
Income and capital gains associated with equity compensation can be pretty daunting for the average employee. These are my top five reporting mistakes. Your personal top five may differ based on your company’s equity compensation program and the education you provide around taxation.
No Schedule D
Employees who do not understand capital gains at all could have this problem when it comes to reporting any sale. However, it’s much more common when there is a cashless exercise or sell-to-cover transaction, particularly if the company defines the FMV as the sale price. The employee may know that the income is reported and the associated taxes are withheld by the company, assume that the exercise (or vest) and the sale are the same transaction because they happened simultaneously and not even consider the need to report the sale. Alternatively, the employee may understand that the sale price and the FMV on the exercise or vest date is the same and assume that there is nothing to report.
Partial Sale Confusion
When an employee sells only some of the shares from an option exercise or restricted stock vest, it is surprisingly easy to misunderstand what should go on the Schedule D. This is more of a problem for employees doing a sell-to-cover transaction, but can happen even if the sale is from held shares. When referencing the exercise or vest statement, the employee reports all exercised/vested shares as being sold and/or reports the cost basis for the total shares acquired as the cost basis for the shares that were sold. The most likely result is a calculation on the Schedule D that shows a sizable capital loss on the sale. Hopefully, cost basis reporting will eventually help prevent this error.
ESPP – Qualifying Disposition
Qualifying dispositions of ESPP shares are confusing because there is still (in most cases) an income element if there was a discount at purchase. Unfortunately, the most common mistake for employees is not reporting that ordinary income when or if the company fails to do so. The income element of a qualifying disposition is the lesser of the discount as if the purchase took place at the beginning of the offering period (which should now be reported to employees on Form 3922) or the spread between the purchase and sale prices. Failure by the company to report that income doesn’t exempt the employee from reporting it.
The exception is that when the sale price is lower than the purchase price, there is no ordinary income on the qualifying disposition–and that means that employees in this unhappy situation are actually more likely to report it correctly.
Reporting Gain Twice
The most common reason for this error is a misunderstanding of restricted stock vests. The employee reports $0 as the cost basis, effectively reporting the spread at vest twice: once as income and once as capital gains. This can happen with options as well if the employee uses the exercise price as the cost basis for the shares when reporting the sale. Double reporting may also happen if an employee doesn’t realize that the income resulting from a disqualifying disposition of ISO or ESPP shares is already included in the Form W-2 (assuming your company is aware of the disposition and reports it correctly).
Failure to Report an ISO Cash Exercise
Employees with ISO grants have a host of tax concepts to familiarize themselves with, but none is quite as mysterious as the issue of AMT. AMT is such a nebulous issue for most people that it is often given only a brief explanation in equity compensation communications.
Many employees hear the words “no income” and assume that is synonymous with “no reporting obligation.” However, any exercise of ISOs (assuming the shares are held at least through the remainder of the tax year) means that the employee must complete and attach Form 6251 to their tax return, even if she or he is not subject to AMT. If the employee is subject to AMT and fails to report the exercise, this is (of course) potentially a much bigger issue than if the employee simply fails to prove she or he is not subject to AMT.
So, what’s the top five for your company? If you don’t know, start thinking about it now.
Here’s a better question: How do you figure out what mistakes your employees are making? First, anything that you don’t personally understand 100% is bound to be even more difficult for employees. Also, anything comes to you as a question is a potential for a reporting problem. Keep your ears open for horror stories–if it’s happened to one person, it could happen to your employees. Finally, if you’re really ambitious, you could survey a sample of your employees with example scenarios to see if they know how to report different transactions.
Back in February, I blogged about tax rate increases in the UK. Now that we’ve gotten past the end of the UK tax year, it’s time to focus on the United States. Although not quite as dramatic, tax rates are expected to increase here beginning next year–yep, just six months from now.
What Did You Expect With a Democratic Administration?
The tax rates that are in effect now are a legacy of the Bush administration and are due to expire at the end of this year. As it stands now, all individual tax rates are expected to increase beginning in 2011. Ordinary income tax rates and short-term capital gains rates currently range from 10% to 35% and will increase to 15% to 39.6%. Long-term capital gains are currently taxed at 15%; this will increase to 20%.
In addition, the tax rate on qualified dividends will increase from 15% to the new ordinary income tax rates. This isn’t such a big deal for stock compensation, since dividends on unvested stock awards are usually already taxed at ordinary income tax rates, but where employees are receiving dividends on vested stock that they hold, this could be important for them to know.
Prior limitations on personal exemptions and itemized deductions will also be reinstated and the estate tax will be restored.
Will Congress Save Us From These Taxes?
Wholesale relief is not expected and an act of Congress is required to extend any of the Bush tax cuts. As daunting as that sounds, I understand that the Obama administration has indicated support for extending the current tax rates for low to middle-income taxpayers. It seems fairly certain, however, that the expected increases in tax rates that apply at higher income levels will happen. Ditto for the increase in the long-term capital gains rate, reductions in allowable personal exemptions, and limitations on itemized deductions. Short-term capital gains are taxed at the same rates as ordinary income, so whatever happens to ordinary income rates will also apply to short-term capital gains. There seems to be some question about what will happen to the qualified dividend rate.
What Isn’t Changing?
The two tax rates that aren’t changing are the rates that apply under the Alternative Minimum Tax–this may be the first good news we’ve heard for ISOs in a long time. If ordinary income tax rates increase but AMT rates stay the same, then ISO exercises will be less likely to trigger AMT liability. And with ordinary income tax rates increasing, holding ISO shares long enough to convert the spread at exercise to a long-term capital gain may be more tempting for employees.
Tax Withholding Rates
Tax withholding rates for federal income tax purposes are based on the marginal income tax rates so when those rates increase, so do the withholding rates that apply to compensation.
There are two rates that apply to supplemental payments (which include NQSO exercises and vesting/payout events for awards):
If all the current tax rates are allowed to expire, the optional flat rate that can be applied to supplemental payments will increase from 25% to 28% (some of you may remember that this is what the rate used to be, nine years or so ago).
The mandatory rate that applies to supplemental payments to individuals that have already received more than $1,000,000 in supplemental payments during the year is the maximum individual tax rate–which is expected to increase to 39.6%.
For companies that allow share withholding on restricted stock and unit awards (most of you that grant these awards), these expected changes could have implications at the corporate level, not just the individual level, since the amount of cash the company will need to make available to cover the tax payments will increase.
More to Come?
And this is just the beginning. Additional tax rate increases will go into effect in 2013 to fund President Obama’s health care reform package.
Planning for the Tax Increases
Just as with the UK increases I blogged about in February, advance planning and employee communication is key. Employees that have accrued considerable appreciation in NQSOs may want to exercise this year, while tax rates are lower. Employees that hold stock that has appreciated significantly in value may want to consider selling–although here the decision is complicated by the different tax rates that may apply depending on how long the shares have been held (i.e., short-term vs. long-term capital gains rates).
The good news is that the NASPP has scheduled a webcast to review the impending tax rate changes and planning considerations–be sure to tune in next Tuesday, July 27, for “How Upcoming Tax Rate Changes Impact Your Stock Plans” with Bill Dunn and Sheryl Eighner from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
18th Annual NASPP Conference Hear about all the latest tax developments impacting stock and executive compensation–straight from the IRS and Treasury–at the 18th Annual NASPP Conference. The Conference will be held from September 20-23 in Chicago; register today.
NASPP New Member Referral Program Refer new members to the NASPP and your NASPP Conference registration could be free. You can save $150 off your registration for each new member you refer, up to the full cost of registration. You’ll also be entered into a raffle for an Apple iPad and the new members you refer save 50% on their membership–it’s a win-win!
NASPP “To Do” List We have so much going on here at the NASPP that it can be hard to keep track of it all, so I keep an ongoing “to do” list for you here in my blog.