Compensation Planner

• Three value lenses: economic value, taxable income, and realized cash flow
• Configurable equity-price growth assumptions
• Option exercise planning with tax impact
• RSU, ISO, and NSO vesting schedule projection
• Side-by-side comparison across salary, equity, and bonus components

Use the Compensation Planner to evaluate an offer, compare packages, or project compensation across a vesting period. It handles overlapping grants, cliff vesting, and configurable stock-price growth.

• Base salary: annual gross salary with a configurable annual raise percentage. Salary compounds each year.
• RSU grants: restricted stock units with vesting schedules. Supports standard 4-year (25/25/25/25), backloaded (5/15/40/40), front-loaded (40/30/20/10), and fully custom per-year percentages. Each grant has its own cliff period, vesting frequency, and grant date.
• Stock options (ISO/NSO): incentive and non-qualified stock options with strike price, vesting schedule, and user-defined exercise plan. You specify exercise events at month granularity, and the planner validates them against vested shares.
• Bonuses: signing (one-time), annual (recurring), and retention bonuses. Enter each as a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of base salary.
• 401(k) match: employer match modeled as a percentage of your contribution up to a cap. This is the employer match only, not the elective deferral limit.
• ESPP: Employee Stock Purchase Plan with configurable discount, contribution rate, purchase frequency, and share-price growth. Modeled as same-day sale (disqualifying disposition), where the discount gain is ordinary income.

The results panel lets you toggle between three perspectives on the same compensation data:

• Economic value: what each component is worth at vest or receipt. RSU value = shares × price at vest. Option value = intrinsic value of vesting shares. 401(k) match = employer dollars. This is the broadest view of total compensation.
• Taxable income: what hits your tax return each year. RSU vesting = ordinary income. ISO exercises = AMT preference only (not regular taxable). NSO exercises = ordinary income on the spread. 401(k) match = excluded. ESPP gain is ordinary income.
• Realized cashflow: after-withholding dollars. Per-component bars show estimated payroll withholding. When you enable the tax overlay, the yearly total and cumulative line update to reflect backend-computed taxes.

Stock options vest on schedule, but tax events occur at exercise, not vest. For each option grant, you can expand the exercise plan and add events at specific months. The exercise month list shows calendar labels from your projection start date. For example, it can show “month 13, Apr 2027”.

• Validation: through each month, cumulative exercised shares cannot exceed cumulative vested shares at that month. You cannot exercise unvested shares.
• Exercise pricing: the stock price at the exercise month uses the grant's configured compound annual growth rate, not a midpoint or year-level average.
• ISO vs NSO: ISO exercises appear as AMT preference items only (no regular taxable income). NSO exercises appear as ordinary income on the spread. The economic view shows intrinsic value at vest for both types.

Four vesting presets are available, plus fully custom:

• Standard 4-year (25/25/25/25): equal vesting each year. Most common at public companies.
• Backloaded 4-year (5/15/40/40): most shares vest in years 3 and 4. Common at Amazon.
• Front-loaded 4-year (40/30/20/10): most shares vest early.
• Custom: specify per-year percentages (must sum to 100%). Add or remove years as needed. Within each year, the planner spreads shares evenly across vesting-frequency intervals.

Toggle “Show tax estimate” to send your projected income to the backend for a full federal and state tax computation. The overlay uses the same AMT engine as the AMT Calculator, applied per projection year.

• Tax years and deductions: each row uses its calendar tax year for federal AMT, state, and FICA constants. The overlay fails when the projection exceeds the statutory tables. It does not reuse an older law year. It can apply the standard deduction or itemized deductions.
• Outside income: advanced settings can add ordinary income, short-term gains, and long-term gains or qualified dividends outside the modeled offer.
• State tax approximation: for Head of Household and Married Filing Separately, state tax uses Single filing status as an approximation.
• FICA: the planner computes Social Security (6.2% up to the wage base) and Medicare (1.45%) separately from the AMT engine. The cash-flow estimate projects future Social Security wage bases, but that projection is not used as a statutory tax table.

• Annual compensation breakdown: stacked bar chart showing each component per year. Values change with the active value lens. When you enable the tax overlay, a line trace shows total tax per year.
• Cumulative total compensation: running sum over the projection period for the selected value lens.
• Equity vesting & exercise timeline: monthly bar chart showing when shares vest, color-coded by grant. Exercise events appear as diamond markers. Dashed vertical lines mark cliff dates.