La Tache,Always good to have a devils advocate, however I am not...

La Tache,

Always good to have a devils advocate, however I am not convinced that your tax system is so unfair on this, nor that it should wear the blame.

The contrafactual system would likely lead to pretty bad tax routing, and when a system like you have exists companies and directors can always decide in advance whether it is safer to pay directors in cash or options. The ATO doesn’t force them to avoid cash payments. Just about everyone else in your country gets paid in cash and can’t defer their tax either.

I still see it as a pretty strong negative signal from directors when they do this. Perhaps they should have negotiated a bigger cash component in their remuneration, so that they had cash to pay the tax, and wouldn’t end up sending such a strong, concerted and negative a signal. Especially stinks selling at the time of the CR.

EL