we need both what you suggest and tax reform around options. It is crazy that you have to pay tax on stock you cant sell. It would be incredibly easy for the IRS to just say when you execute an option that stock will always be treated as regular income and can never get benefit of capital gains tax no matter how long you hold it before selling. There are obviously many drawbacks to this but at least you cant get screwed paying taxes on money you never earn. This will never happen because the people lobbying for the current tax codes are not the people getting hurt by these ridiculous AMT rules. AMT was created to prevent people like steve jobs from collecting their entire salary in the form of options and not paying any taxes but the people most effected are clearly not rich CEOs like steve jobs<p>If i buy a plot of land work hard to build a house on that land i dont have to pay tax on the increased value of the property until i sell it yet if i work at a company and buy options as it grows i am taxed immediately before i can realize a gain