taxes
incentive stock options are taxed funny. they're worth nothing when they are issued to you. but maybe someday they'll be worth a lot. when that happens you could exercise them and sell them right away. if you do you pay taxes on them as normal income. or you could exercise them and hold them for a year before selling them. then you pay taxes on them twice. when you exercise them you pay taxes on the difference between fair market value and the option price. then when you sell them you pay taxes on the difference between the sell price and the fair market value when you exercised them. if you take the latter approach you could have to pay taxes on $100k real income and $100k iso income. the screwy part about the latter is that you haven't sold the stock yet. you haven't made any money from it yet. it's just wacky. you don't pay taxes on houses when you buy them at below market from a foreclosure. you pay taxes when you sell the asset. not when you buy it. sheehs. timmer for president.