The taxes aren&#x27;t double though. A highly simplified example:<p><pre><code>  1. Your company gives you $1400 to exercise options (I don&#x27;t think Clearbit is doing this, to be clear)
  2. You pay $400 in taxes and early exercise $1000 of options in exchange for 1000 shares at $1 each
  3. Later you sell those 1000 shares for $1m total
</code></pre>
At step 3, you will pay capital gains tax only on the $999,000 of actual gain. You don&#x27;t have to pay taxes again on the original $1k.