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Complex call option on the common stock of a company, granted by the company to an employee

Employee stock options (ESO) is a label that refers to compensation contracts between an employer and an employee that carries some characteristics of financial options. Employee stock options are commonly viewed as an internal agreement providing the possibility to participate in the share capital of a company, granted by the company to an employee as part of the employee's remuneration package. Regulators and economists have since specified that ESOs are compensation contracts. These nonstandard contracts exist between employee and employer, whereby the employer has the liability of delivering a certain number of shares of the employer stock, when and if the employee stock options are exercised by the employee. The contract length varies, and often carries terms that may change depending on the employer and the current employment status of the employee. In the United States, the terms are detailed within an employer's "Stock Option Agreement for Incentive Equity Plan". Essentially, this is an agreement which grants the employee eligibility to purchase a limited amount of stock at a predetermined price. The resulting shares that are granted are typically restricted stock. There is no obligation for the employee to exercise the option, in which case the option will lapse. AICPA's Financial Reporting Alert describes these contracts as amounting to a "short" position in the employer's equity, unless the contract is tied to some other attribute of the employer's balance sheet. To the extent the employer's position can be modeled as a type of option, it is most often modeled as a "short position in a call". From the employee's point of view, the compensation contract provides a conditional right to buy the equity of the employer and when modeled as an option, the employee's perspective is that of a "long position in a call option".

Many companies use employee stock options plans to retain, reward, and attract employees, the objective being to give employees an incentive to behave in ways that will boost the company's stock price. The employee could exercise the option, pay the exercise price and would be issued with ordinary shares in the company. As a result, the employee would experience a direct financial benefit of the difference between the market and the exercise prices. Stock options are also used as golden handcuffs if their value has increased drastically. An employee leaving the company would also effectively be leaving behind a large amount of potential cash, subject to restrictions as defined by the company. These restrictions, such as vesting and non transferring, attempt to align the holder's interest with those of the business shareholders. Another substantial reason that companies issue employee stock options as compensation is to preserve and generate cash flow. The cash flow comes when the company issues new shares and receives the exercise price and receives a tax deduction equal to the "intrinsic value" of the ESOs when exercised. Employee stock options are offered differently based on position and role at the company, as determined by the company. Management typically receives the most as part of their executive compensation package. ESOs may also be offered to non executive level staff, especially by businesses that are not yet profitable, insofar as they may have few other means of compensation. Alternatively, employee type stock options can be offered to non employees: suppliers, consultants, lawyers and promoters for services rendered.

Over the course of employment, a company generally issues employee stock options to an employee which can be exercised at a particular price set on the grant day, generally a public company's current stock price or a private company's most recent valuation, such as an independent 409A valuation commonly used within the United States. Depending on the vesting schedule and the maturity of the options, the employee may elect to exercise the options at some point, obligating the company to sell the employee its stock shares at whatever stock price was used as the exercise price. At that point, the employee may either sell public stock shares, attempt to find a buyer for private stock shares (either an individual, specialized company, or secondary market), or hold on to it in the hope of further price appreciation.

The US GAAP accounting model for employee stock options and similar share based compensation contracts changed substantially in 2005 as FAS123 (revised) began to take effect. According to US generally accepted accounting principles in effect before June 2005, principally FAS123 and its predecessor APB 25, stock options granted to employees did not need to be recognized as an expense on the income statement when granted if certain conditions were met, although the cost (expressed under FAS123 as a form of the fair value of the stock option contracts) was disclosed in the notes to the financial statements. This allows a potentially large form of employee compensation to not show up as an expense in the current year, and therefore, currently overstate income. Many assert that over reporting of income by methods such as this by American corporations was one contributing factor in the Stock Market Downturn of 2002. Employee stock options have to be expensed under US GAAP in the US. Each company must begin expensing stock options no later than the first reporting period of a fiscal year beginning after June 15, 2005. As most companies have fiscal years that are calendars, for most companies this means beginning with the first quarter of 2006. As a result, companies that have not voluntarily started expensing options will only see an income statement effect in fiscal year 2006. Companies will be allowed, but not required, to restate prior period results after the effective date. This will be quite a change versus before, since options did not have to be expensed in case the exercise price was at or above the stock price (intrinsic value based method APB 25). Only a disclosure in the footnotes was required. Intentions from the international accounting body IASB indicate that similar treatment will follow internationally. As above, "Method of option expensing: SAB 107", issued by the SEC, does not specify a preferred valuation model, but 3 criteria must be met when selecting a valuation model: The model is applied in a manner consistent with the fair value measurement objective and other requirements of FAS123R; is based on established financial economic theory and generally applied in the field; and reflects all substantive characteristics of the instrument (i. e. assumptions on volatility, interest rate, dividend yield, etc.) need to be specified.

Most employee stock options in the US are non transferable and they are not immediately exercisable although they can be readily hedged to reduce risk. Unless certain conditions are satisfied, the IRS considers that their "fair market value" cannot be "readily determined", and therefore "no taxable event" occurs when an employee receives an option grant. For a stock option to be taxable upon grant, the option must either be actively traded or it must be transferable, immediately exercisable, and the fair market value of the option must be readily ascertainable. Depending on the type of option granted, the employee may or may not be taxed upon exercise. Non qualified stock options (those most often granted to employees) are taxed upon exercise as standard income. Incentive stock options (ISO) are not but are subject to Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), assuming that the employee complies with certain additional tax code requirements. Most importantly, shares acquired upon exercise of ISOs must be held for at least one year after the date of exercise if the favorable capital gains tax are to be achieved. However, taxes can be delayed or reduced by avoiding premature exercises and holding them until near expiration day and hedging along the way. The taxes applied when hedging are friendly to the employee/optionee. The Sharesave scheme is a tax efficient employee stock option program in the United Kingdom.

This item of the profit and loss (P&L) statement of companies' earnings reports is due to the different timing of option expense recognition between the GAAP P&L and how the IRS deals with it, and the resulting difference between estimated and actual tax deductions. At the time the options are awarded, GAAP requires an estimate of their value to be run through the P&L as an expense. This lowers operating income and GAAP taxes. However, the IRS treats option expense differently, and only allows their tax deductibility at the time the options are exercised/expire and the true cost is known. This means that cash taxes in the period the options are expensed are higher than GAAP taxes. The delta goes into a deferred income tax asset on the balance sheet. When the options are exercised/expire, their actual cost becomes known and the precise tax deduction allowed by the IRS can then be determined. There is then a balancing up event. If the original estimate of the options' cost was too low, there will be more tax deduction allowed than was at first estimated. This 'excess' is run through the P&L in the period when it becomes known (i. e. the quarter in which the options are exercised). It raises net income (by lowering taxes) and is subsequently deducted out in the calculation of operating cashflow because it relates to expenses/earnings from a prior period.

Stock option expensing has been surrounded in controversy since the early 1900s. The earliest attempts by accounting regulators to expense stock options were unsuccessful and resulted in the promulgation of FAS123 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board which required disclosure of stock option positions but no income statement expensing, per se. The controversy continued and in 2005, at the insistence of the SEC, the FASB modified the FAS123 rule to provide a rule that the options should be expensed as of the grant date. One misunderstanding is that the expense is at the fair value of the options. This is not true. The expense is indeed based on the fair value of the options but that fair value measure does not follow the fair value rules for other items which are governed by a separate set of rules under ASC Topic 820. In addition the fair value measure must be modified for forfeiture estimates and may be modified for other factors such as liquidity before expensing can occur. Finally the expense of the resulting number is rarely made on the grant date but in some cases must be deferred and in other cases may be deferred over time as set forth in the revised accounting rules for these contracts known as FAS123 (revised).