<i>&gt; They could have avoided this by waiting to exercise their options...</i><p>The article refers to &quot;stock grants&quot; and refers to the fact that &quot;Top sales employees were awarded with annual bonuses of 20,000 shares of common stock&quot;.<p>IANAL but AFAIK, receipt of stock grants would trigger an income tax liability on the value of the shares at the time they were granted.<p>Tax treatment of stock grants and options is very complicated and so dependent on details that it seems somewhat unfair to jump to any conclusions based on assumptions which are almost certainly incorrect.