Financial Advisors for Tech Employees With RSUs

Kimberly Green | 2026-04-14

Financial Advisors for Tech Employees With Vested RSUs If you work at a tech company with RSUs vesting regularly, you're sitting on one of the most tax-intensive forms of compensation in existence. Every vest creates an ordinary income tax event. Every sale creates a capital gains event. Every year without active management, you're almost certainly overpaying taxes or failing to manage concentrated equity risk. Most advisors understand RSU basics. Few actually build the ongoing tax and equity management strategy that turns RSU compensation into real long-term wealth. That's the difference between good enough and actually good. The RSU Tax Problem You Probably Don't Know You Have RSUs are taxed as ordinary income at vest - not capital gains. That's the first thing. The second thing: default federal withholding is almost never enough. Here's the scenario that hits most people. You have an RSU grant of 100 units vesting at $50 per share. At vest, you owe tax on $5,000 of ordinary income. Your employer withholds at the default supplemental wage rate of 22% = $1,100. You're now up $5,000 in equity (deposited to your brokerage account). But your actual tax liability is much higher. If you're in the 32% federal bracket (married filing jointly with $200K+ income) plus California's 9.3% state tax, your total tax rate is 41.3%. Your actual tax owed: $2,065. Your withholding: $1,100. You just created a $965 tax liability that will show up on your April 15th return. Scale that across 4 years of RSU vesting with multiple grant refreshes, and you're looking at a $10K-15K April surprise. Most people don't budget for this. The fix: increase withholding on your regular paycheck to compensate, or sell a portion of RSUs at vest specifically to cover the full tax liability. Plan it in advance, don't discover it at tax time. The Sell-at-Vest vs. Hold Decision (With Real Numbers) The most common RSU question: should you sell immediately at vest or hold for appreciation? Let's say you have 100 RSUs vesting at $50. At vest, you own $5,000 of stock. Your basis (for capital gains purposes) is $50/share. The tax clock starts here. The case for selling immediately: RSUs are already taxed as ordinary income at vest. Selling creates no additional tax event (you'd pay capital gains on appreciation, but you'd do that regardless). Selling immediately locks in your after-tax return and eliminates concentrated equity risk. You're already economically dependent on the company for your salary - no reason to add more company stock to that risk. The case for holding: If you believe the stock...

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