Wouldn't you be taxed on the cost of the options as income, and then the "profit" (i.e., Phase 3) as capital gains?

You still have to buy the options, you just get a better price if the stock price increased since the grant. I have no idea however if there is any tax on the current price - strike price but I don't think there is, but I don't really know for sure. I think you just pay on the sale price - purchase price - comission at sale time.

A same day cashless transaction can get rolled into regular income however and that's the only way I've ever done it.

The idea is that once you put is down it will stop swirling around in your head and causing anxiety.

This actually has worked for me since I started in January. I keep a thin moleskine notebook and I just write stuff down. It is so much LESS anxiety producing than to perseverate on the same 18 things I need to do.

And, yet, things still fall through the cracks.

All I know is I love Kelly Clarkson. Even (maybe especially) when she wears unflattering clothes.

Does this help at all, PC: [link]

You still have to buy the options, you just get a better price if the stock price increased since the grant.

Oh right. Duh. I wasn't thinking through the whole "options" thing.

Wouldn't you be taxed on the cost of the options as income, and then the "profit" (i.e., Phase 3) as capital gains?

See, if the cost of options somehow gets added into the wages/tips/etc like bon bon said, that could explain the tax owed even after withholding from my regular salary, although it's still weird because I don't think the tax rate is 60%.

I wasn't expecting to owe this much. This is bizarre.

Also, isn't there some rule about short- vs. long-term with stocks?

Well, they have different sections on the form.

things will always fall through the cracks.

things overheard at work: I take them to lubricate my eyes,

short-term gains are for stocks held under one year.

Does this help at all, PC: [link]

Oh, that's great, Sue! Thanks. Now, see, I don't think I have that V in Box 12, but it seems like they're reporting the ISO income in Box 14.

And on the third page of this thing, it says that the Cost Or Other Basis is the amount you paid for the stock plus the income reported on the W-2. This is exactly how HRBlock calculates it, and this guide specifically says that's what supposed to keep me from being taxed twice!! Maybe because I don't have a Box 12, TurboTax and TaxAct aren't understanding that my capital gains were included in my income already?

And oh!! It even answers my other question: it says that some employers use the closing price to report on the W-2, which makes sense since the closing price was lower than the price I sold at.

It's seeming to me that, thankfully, I...should not be paying thousands more in taxes than I expected? And HRBlock knows what it's doing? I wish I could get those cheaper programs to understand what's going on, though.

CNN is running a really weird piece about a polygamist group that was raided in the 50s, interviewing a bunch of women who were children at the time. The whole thing is being portrayed as some family tragedy, all noble fathers sneaking back to see their wives and the women hiding new pregnancies from the big bad authorities (since part of the men's release from prison was a promise not to, you know, keep it up. Iit was many years before some of the families were reunited." Which, yes, I'm sure that's hard and all, but it's a deeply strange perspective when not contrasted with any other view of the situation.

The Short Creek Raid. [link]

The public really turned on law enforcement once they saw the pictures of the hundreds of crying children being taken from their parents. For fifty some years afterwards officials just looked the other way... until the latest round of crazy abuses started.