Little hazy on how the entire RSU's and etrade works
Is the remaining amount tax free? As in, if the amount shown (which I can sell) on etrade is $5000 then if I sell the entire shares will my bank account be increased by $5000? The stocks they sell are withholding.  So let's say you had $7000 of stock and they sold $2000 for taxes.  That leaves you with $5000.  But the actual taxes paid might be more or less than $2000.  They go in the same bucket as the rest of your withholding.  If too much is withheld, you get a refund.  Too little and you owe them.  Way too little and you have to pay penalties.   At the end of the year, you will show $7000 as income and $2000 as withheld for taxes from that transaction.  You may also have a capital gain if the stock increases in price.  They do not generally withhold on stock sales, as they don't necessarily know what was your gain and what was your loss.  You usually have to handle that yourself.   The main point that I wanted to make is that the sale is not tax free.  It's just that you already had tax withheld.  It may or may not be enough. (I'm assuming the tag of United-states is accurate) Yes, the remaining amount is tax free -- at the current price.  If you sell at exactly the original price, there is no capital gain, no capital loss.  So you've already payed the taxes. If you sell and there is a capital gain of $3000, then you will pay taxes on the $3000.  If 33% is your marginal tax rate, and if you held the stock for less than a year, then you will keep $7000 and pay taxes of $1000.  Somehow, I doubt your marginal tax rate is 33%. If you hold the stock for a year after eTrade sold some for you to pay taxes, then you will pay 15% on the gain -- or $450. eTrade sold the shares to pay the taxes generated by the income.  Yes, those shares were considered income.  If you sell and have a loss, well, life sucks.  However, if you sell something else, you can use the loss to offset the other gain.  So if you sell stock A for a loss of $3000, and sell stock B at a gain of $4000, then you pay taxes on the net of $1000.
"Value is entirely subjective to individuals.  Nothing has ""intrinsic value"".  So if humans put a lot of work into polishing a turd, it's still worthless.  But if you put half that much work into preparing a meal or building a car, your labor is actually ""productive"" because it is meeting a consumer's demand.  This is how ""productive work"" is defined in economics (at least the Austrian branch) - people are willing to voluntarily trade for the product of your labor." I see several interesting statement in your question.  A. my only income is from my Employer B. I also receive employer stock (ESPP, RSU, NSO). However, employer withholds taxes for these stock transactions through my broker (I see them broken down on my W2).  C. I have been subject to Alternative Minimum Tax. A implies a simple tax return. B and C tell the opposite story. In fact if B is not done correctly The amount withheld due to payroll may be perfect but the under withholding could be due to the ESPP's, RSUs and NSOs.  The AMT can throw everything else out the window.  If a person has a very simple tax situation: Income doesn't change a lot from paycheck to paycheck; they take the standard deduction; the number of exemptions equals the number of people in the family. Then the withholding is very close to perfect.  The role of the exemptions on the W-4 is to compensate for situations that go above the standard deduction. The role of extra withholding is when the situation requires more withholding due to situations that will bring in extra income or if the AMT is involved. I mean it hasn't really worked anywhere. You don't create wealth with socialism. Incentives are gone for any sort value creation.  You're already looking backwards at 'peak civilization' once you've gone down the socialism path. Everything ahead is fighting over what's left.  &gt;An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.   &gt;After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little ...   &gt;The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed. I'm guessing you're talking about options given to employees. The company can issue stock options at whatever strike price it wants. The difference between the strike price and the actual market value is considered income to the employee. You can get the options at $0 strike just as well (although companies generally just give RSUs instead in this case). "Members of the Federal Reserve System keep track of what money a bank has (if it's not in the vault), who owns what shares of stock, who owns what bond, etc. The part of the Federal Reserve System that tracks stock ownership is the Depository Trust Company (DTC). They have a group of subsidiaries that settle various types of security transactions. DTC is a member of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, a limited-purpose   trust company under New York State banking law and a registered   clearing agency with the Securities and Exchange Commission. There's lots of information on their website describing this process. DTCC's subsidiary, The Depository Trust Company (DTC), established in   1973, was created to reduce costs and provide clearing and settlement   efficiencies by immobilizing securities and making ""book-entry""   changes to ownership of the securities. DTC provides securities   movements for NSCC's net settlements1, and settlement for institutional   trades (which typically involve money and securities transfers between   custodian banks and broker/dealers), as well as money market   instruments. Black pools are trades done where the price is not shared with the market. But the DTC is the one who keeps track of who owns which shares. They have records of all net transactions2. The DTC is the counterparty for transactions. When stock moves from one entity to another the DTC is involved. As the central counterparty for the nation's major exchanges and   markets, DTCC clears and settles virtually all broker-to-broker equity 1. This is the link that shows that settlements are reported on a ""net basis"". 2. If broker A sells 1000 shares of something to broker B at 8 and then five minutes later broker B sells the 1000 shares back to A, you cannot be sure that that total volume will be recorded. No net trading took place and there would be fees to pay for no reason if they reported both trades. Note: In dark pool trading quite often the two parties don't know each other. For shares (book-keeping records) to be exchanged it has to be done through a Clearing House." "I'm trying to understand how an ETF manager optimized it's own revenue.  Here's an example that I'm trying to figure out.  ETF firm has an agreement with GS for blocks of IBM. They have agreed on daily VWAP + 1% for execution price.  Further, there is a commission schedule for 5 mils with GS. Come month end, ETF firm has to do a monthly rebalance. As such must buy 100,000 shares at IBM which goes for about $100 The commission for the trade is 100,000 * 5 mils = $500 in commission for that trade. I assume all of this is covered in the expense ratio. Such that if VWAP for the day was 100, then each share got executed to the ETF at 101 (VWAP+ %1) + .0005 (5 mils per share) = for a resultant 101.0005 cost basis  The ETF then turns around and takes out (let's say) 1% as the expense ratio ($1.01005 per share)  I think everything so far is pretty straight forward. Let me know if I missed something to this point.  Now, this is what I'm trying to get my head around. ETF firm has a revenue sharing agreement as well as other ""relations"" with GS. One of which is 50% back on commissions as soft dollars. On top of that GS has a program where if you do a set amount of ""VWAP +"" trades you are eligible for their corporate well-being programs and other ""sponsorship"" of ETF's interests including  helping to pay for marketing, rent, computers, etc.  Does that happen? Do these disclosures exist somewhere?" Some good answers already, but let me add a TL:DR version. Brokers work like a special type of bank account where you can deposit or withdraw money. The major difference is that they also give you the ability to buy/sell investments with the money in your account which you can do by either calling them or using their website. Important: Many investments you will make through a broker(e.g. stocks) are not insured against losing value like the money in your bank account. Yes. You incur income tax on the RSU on they date they vest. At this point you own the actual shares and you can decide to sell them or to hold them. If you hold them for the required period, and sell them later, the difference between your price at vesting and the sales price would be taxed as long term capital gains. Caution: if you decide to hold, you are still liable to pay income tax in the year they vest. You have to pay taxes on income that you haven't made yet. This is fairly dangerous: if the stock goes down, you may lose a lot of this tax payment. Technically you could recover some of this through claiming capital losses, but that this is severely restricted: the IRS makes it much easier to increase taxes through gains than reducing taxes through losses.