
Google's Outrageous 2007 Compensation Revealed - drm237
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/outrageous_google_2007_compensation_revealed
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staunch
> Not to nitpick, but how do you spend $474,662 on security?

Seems damn easy to me. How much does some security technology + bodyguards
cost? I'm sure Larry/Sergey have at least as much security, but apparently
they're covering the cost. I recall Ellison's security was into the millions.

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fallentimes
When you're worth billions of dollars, what's the point in having a million
dollar salary.

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ardit33
It is outrageos!!! It is just another way to skip paying taxes. If you have a
salary, you have to pay 12% on payroll taxes (for the first 102k), plus 9.25%
CA taxes, and probably 32% personal income taxes.

What they are getting, is security, housing, travel expenses to private
islands, parties, etc.... all of those end up as "businness expenses", which
obviously reduce taxes.

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DocSavage
They're paying plenty of tax whenever they cash out.

For example: "After cashing in more than 9 million shares valued at $3.7
billion last year, 16 Google insiders will owe the Golden State as much as
$380 million in taxes -- enough to cover the salaries of more than 3,000 state
workers."
[http://www.boston.com/business/taxes/articles/2007/01/06/goo...](http://www.boston.com/business/taxes/articles/2007/01/06/google_stock_boom_boosts_calif_coffers/)

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ardit33
True, but there is a huge difference. They are paying taxes as for "capital
gains", which means they get taxed only 15%, instead of a normal income (
which is over 30%). This is the same thing that Buffet was saying that the
rich people are getting taxed a lot less (percentage wise) then their
secretaries.

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marvin
This is a non-story. It might be a _slightly_ interesting point that the top
Google executives don't take out salary, but stories like these are never
anything but PR stunts. Anyone with half a chimpanzee's brain understands that
these numbers don't mean anything. All 3 of them could take a salary of 500
million dollars, and the shareholders would hardly notice. I suppose the goal
with stunts like these is to show solidarity with the workers who earn much
less, but this rings hollow when each of them has enough stock to buy the
family of every employee. I'm not saying it's a problem that these guys have
great fortunes, but it seems a bit cowardly for them to pretend that they are
actually quite frugal. They are not, by a long shot.

The only thing worth noting is that they only use their own shares for large
expenses. But the practical implications of this are miniscule. And in the
case of the CEO, these shares were after all issued at a time.

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aston
The top execs taking no salary is definitely a signal, but it's not solidarity
with the other employees. Taking your pay all in equity means you're pegging
your future wealth entirely on the performance of the company. Having
executives aligned so heavily on real-world success (as opposed to just
maximizing their yearly bonus) is pretty much all a stockholder--employees
included--can ask for.

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mattmaroon
If anything, this just highlights how fucked up our tax system is. Modern
executives receive all of their income in the form of stock options so they'll
be taxed at the capital gains rate, ensuring that their marginal tax rate is
half that of the bottom of the line programmer in their organization.

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pingswept
I had a momentary rush when I thought that they were giving themselves 1000 *
sqrt(3) bonuses. But that's $1,732, not $1,723.

Ah, well.

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mixmax
Outrageous!

