RSU Tax Implications of 83(b) Election
I can make that election to pay taxes now (even though they aren't vested) based on the dollar value at the time they are granted? That is correct. You must file the election with the IRS within 30 days after the grant (and then attach a copy to that year's tax return). would I not pay any taxes on the gains because I already claimed them as income? No, you claim income based on the grant value, the gains after that are your taxable capital gains. The difference is that if you don't use 83(b) election - that would not be capital gains, but rather ordinary salary income. what happens if I quit / get terminated after paying taxes on un-vested shares? Do I lose those taxes, or do I get it back in a refund next year? Or would it be a deduction next year? You lose these taxes. That's the risk you're taking. Generally 83(b) election is not very useful for RSUs of established public companies. You take a large risk of forfeited taxes to save the difference between capital gains and ordinary gains, which is not all that much. It is very useful when you're in a startup with valuations growing rapidly but stocks not yet publicly trading, which means that if you pay tax on vest you'll pay much more and won't have stocks to sell to cover for that, while the amounts you put at risk are relatively small.
And with their complete and utter control of the US economy via the Fed and the Treasury and banks, they can squeeze America's balls when ever they feel like and drag them into their fake wars  And America gets Taxes and loses health care and is forced to survive on food stamps, and the 1% sucks the fat of all the wealth via goobly gook financial products and rapes the economy when it goes bad.   Every American politician must first get his asshole examined by AIPAC before he can even contemplate running, yet the Jews don't even make up 1 % of the vote.  Its as if the Popular vote does not matter, its who the Jews choose . . it wasn't Russia that hacked the election, it was the Jews who rigged it and then used liddle Jew Zuckerberg to implicate the Russians.  And now we have a Jew bitch as a president who has spent his entire life in debt to the Banks and that evil gargoyle Nathanyahu perpetually perched on his shoulder braying into his ear about war and millions of dollars being spent on investigating Russian posts on Face book, and under the chaos, the Jews have started to unwind the Fed with the first $4 billion of non-existent mortgages. I assume I can/will need to file an 83(b) election, in order to avoid   tax repercussions? What exactly will this save me from? 83(b) election is for restricted stock grants, not for stock purchases. For restricted stocks, you generally pay income tax when they vest. For startups the price difference between the time of the grant and the time of the vesting can be astronomical and by choosing 83(b) you effectively pay income tax on the value of the grant instead of the value of the vest. Then, you only pay capital gains tax on the difference between the sale price and the grant value when you sell. In your case you're exercising an option, i.e.: you're buying a stock, so 83(b) is irrelevant. What you will pay though is the tax on the difference between the strike price and the stock FMV (unless the stocks you end up buying are restricted - which would have been the case if you exercised your options early, but I don't think is going to be the case now). What steps should I take to (in the eyes of the law) guarantee that   the board has received my execution notice? The secretary of the board   is a notorious procrastinator and can be very unorganized. You should read what the grant contract/company policy says on that. Ask the HR/manager. Usually, a certified letter with return receipt should be enough, but you should verify the format, the address, and the timeframe. The 'same day rule' in the UK is a rule for matching purposes only.  It says that sales on any day are matched firstly with purchases made on the same day for the purposes of ascertaining any gain/loss. Hence the phrase 'bed-and-breakfast' ('b&b') when you wish to crystalise a gain (that is within the exempt amount) and re-establish a purchase price at a higher level.  You do the sale on one day, just before the market closes, which gets matched with your original purchase, and then you buy the shares back the next day, just after the market opens.  This is standard tax-planning.  Whenever you have a paper gain, and you wish to lock that gain out of being taxed, you do a bed-and-breakfast transaction, the idea being to use up your annual exemption each and every year.  Of course, if your dealing costs are high, then they may outweigh any tax saved, and so it would be pointless. For the purpose of an example, let's assume that the UK tax year is the same as the calendar year. Scenario 1. Suppose I bought some shares in 2016, for a total price of Stg.50,000. Suppose by the end of 2016, the holding is worth Stg.54,000, resulting in a paper gain of Stg.4,000. Question.  Should I do a b&b transaction to make use of my Stg.11,100 annual exemption ? Answer.  Well, with transaction costs at 1.5% for a round-trip trade, suppose, and stamp duty on the purchase of 0.5%, your total costs for a b&b will be Stg1,080, and your tax saved (upon some future sale date) assuming you are a 20% tax-payer is 20%x(4,000-1,080) = Stg584 (the transaction costs are deductible, we assume).  This does not make sense. Scenario 2. The same as scenario 1., but the shares are worth Stg60,000 by end-2016. Answer.  The total transaction costs are 2%x60,000 = 1,200 and so the taxable gain of 10,000-1,200 = 8,800 would result in a tax bill of 20%x8,800 = 1,760 and so the transaction costs are lower than the tax to be saved (a strict analysis would take into account only the present value of the tax to be saved), it makes sense to crystalise the gain.  We sell some day before the tax year-end, and re-invest the very next day. Scenario 3. The same as scenario 1., but the shares are worth Stg70,000 by end-2016. Answer.  The gain of 20,000 less costs would result in a tax bill for 1,500 (this is: 20%x(20,000 - 2%x70,000 - 11,100) ).  This tax bill will be on top of the dealing costs of 1,400.  But the gain is in excess of the annual exemption.  The strategy is to sell just enough of the holding to crystallise a taxable gain of just 11,100. The fraction, f%, is given by: f%x(70,000-50,000) - 2%xf%x70,000 = 11,100 ... which simplifies to: f% = 11,100/18,600 = 59.68%. The tax saved is 20%x11,100 = 2,220, versus costs of 2%x59.58%x70,000 = 835.52. This strategy of partial b&b is adopted because it never makes sense to pay tax early ! End. I would ask your HR or benefits department to be certain, but here's how I read that without any specific knowledge of the situation: What is right to receive the RSU consideration? Company A was bought by Company B.  You had unvested Restricted Stock Units in A, which is now gone.  B is saying that you now have the right to receive consideration equivalent to the value of those RSUs in A. Since B is private, there's no publicly traded stock, so it will likely be in cash, but read the rest of the paperwork or talk to HR to be certain.   For example, if you had 100 RSUs vesting next year and the price of stock in A was $50 when the company was bought, those RSUs would be worth $5,000.  B is give you the right to consideration for those RSUs, hopefully for somewhere around $5,000.  That consideration is unvested, meaning you must stay employed until the vesting period in order to claim that right. If you are fired without cause (i.e. laid off), you will receive those unvested claims as compensation.   I assume the same will be applicable if employee leaves the company  Probably not.  In any situation, if you voluntarily leave a company, any unvested stock, RSUs, options, etc. are forfeited. "Pretty simple actually. This is a state-run defined benefit plan, where the benefit is calculated based on the length of the employment and the contributed amounts. This is what in the US is known as the Social Security.  This is a defined contribution plan, where the employee can chose the level of risk based on certain pre-defined investment guidelines (more conservative or more aggressive). In Poland, it appears that there's a certain amount of the state-mandated SS tax is transferred to these plans. Nothing in the US is like that, but you can see it as a mandatory IRA with a preset limited choice of mutual funds to invest into, as an analogy. The recent change was to reduce the portion of the madatory contribution that is diverted to this plan from 7+% to 2.3% (on account of expanding the contribution to (1)). Probably the recent crashes of the stock markets that affected these accounts lead to this decision. This is voluntary defined contribution plan, similar to the US 401Ks. This division is actually pretty common, not unique to Poland. I'd say its the ""standard"" pension scheme, as opposed to what we're used to in the US." Business Apprentice is internship. That is not what is applicable for you. You're a visiting professor/researcher, which falls under Article 22, so you don't get the standard deduction. "Do you have other income that you are not considering?  Interest and dividends would be an example, but there are all sorts of options.   Also with your witholding is it set up such that your employers have any idea of your tax bracket ultimately based on your combined incomes?  Usually what they do is take out money assuming you will be in the tax bracket of any given paycheck spread out over the course of a year.  For example, for federal I had an option to select (in an online form that fills out my W4 for me) ""married: withold at higher single rate"" and did to try and cover this fact.  Eventually I may end up having to calculate my own witholding to fix a too-low problem like yours." Taxing divident earnings hurts bank shareholders, customers, and qualitatively impacts the equities market for the worse because it  A) Lowers the incentive to hold an equity instrument over long and intermediate periods, incentivizes short term holdings creating a more chaoticly traded stock market with more pronounced crises occurring more frequently.  B) The resulting dead weight loss of long term equities investment constricts the capital available to banks and investment firms, limiting the services they can offer their customers, decreasing product yield and increasing borrowing costs.  C) The banks, having lost business in long term equities trading, then of course make less money and return less money to their shareholders.  No such things as a free lunch, my dude.