this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Am I the only one who thinks a non-founding CEO should never be allowed (let’s say by law) to get a raise simply due to how big their compensation package already is when they get hired?
What do they need more for? Invest that shit in the company or the other workers, and make CEOs job hop for raises like the rest of us have been doing for years. Except when they leave, they are explicitly barred from rehire at that company or any directly related to it. (Imagine this happens, and all of a sudden you have a wave of CEOs pushing for breaking up huge umbrella companies so they can maintain their grift.. lol)
If they job hop every year, well that sure would make it obvious how pathetically little they actually do, wouldn’t it? When a series of “the next person” steps into the role and literally nothing changes ever.
Exactly. If you're not a founder, you're an employee, and you'll need to earn your keep.
I think CEOs should be paid almost exclusively in stock, but that stock should also be taxed as regular income. If you're regularly hopping, you won't have enough time to get a meaningful amount of stock, so your income would be fairly low.
Stock
at least, RSUs
is AFAIK taxed like supplemental income ( https://www.harnesswealth.com/articles/what-you-need-to-know-about-restricted-stock-units-rsus/ ), which is very similar to regular income. Stock options are different though, and maybe this is what you're referring to
I think (???) options can be beneficial to the recipient from a tax perspective vs. other compensation but not an expert...
And then there are capital gains, which is a different, but related, story...
Huh, I thought there was something like RSUs that were delayed compensation, but that's apparently wrong. Looking into it, it looks like they don't really avoid taxation on the actual compensation (either they're taxed on vesting for RSUs, or taxed on the option spread), and one of the main benefits is delayed taxation/rolling options if the value drops.
So the main loophole seems to be inheritance taxes, which is unrelated to compensation, but does fuel the trend of borrowing instead of selling assets. If the estate was taxed for all unrealized capital gains before inheritance, I think we'd see a lot higher income tax bills from execs because it would essentially eliminate the "borrow/buy/die" loophole. We could take it one step further and require immediate taxation anytime stock changes hands (so even charitable giving would trigger capital gains tax).
That law will never be passed because the government is owned by corporations but if it did pass they would create a loophole. If the loophole was closed then the corporation would move to a more tax friendly country.
An executive action could change things because it can be effected immediately and penalize moving assets out of the country but you'd have to make it count because the cat is out of the bag at that point.