ESOPS – Employee Stock Ownership Plans – Taxability

Last Friday we covered the taxability of ESOPs in India.  https://faoblog.com/esops-employee-stock-ownership-plans-taxability/

Let us look at some taxability provisions related to ESOPs, in the United States:

ESOPs have a number of significant tax benefits, the most important of which are:

  1. Contributions of stock are tax-deductible: That means companies can get a current cash flow advantage by issuing new shares or treasury shares to the ESOP, albeit this means existing owners will be diluted.
  2. Cash contributions are deductible: A company can contribute cash on a discretionary basis year-to-year and take a tax deduction for it, whether the contribution is used to buy shares from current owners or to build up a cash reserve in the ESOP for future use.
  3. Contributions used to repay a loan the ESOP takes out to buy company shares are tax-deductible:The ESOP can borrow money to buy existing shares, new shares, or treasury shares. Regardless of the use, the contributions are deductible, meaning ESOP financing is done in pretax dollars.
  4. Sellers in a C corporation can get a tax deferral: In C corporations, once the ESOP owns 30% of all the shares in the company, the seller can reinvest the proceeds of the sale in other securities and defer any tax on the gain.
  5. In S corporations, the percentage of ownership held by the ESOP is not subject to income tax at the federal level (and usually the state level as well): That means, for instance, that there is no income tax on 30% of the profits of an S corporation with an ESOP holding 30% of the stock, and no income tax at all on the profits of an S corporation wholly owned by its ESOP. Note, however, that the ESOP still must get a pro-rata share of any distributions the company makes to owners.
  6. Dividends are tax-deductible: Reasonable dividends used to repay an ESOP loan, passed through to employees, or reinvested by employees in company stock are tax-deductible.
  7. Employees pay no tax on the contributions to the ESOP, only the distribution of their accounts, and then at potentially favorable rates: The employees can roll over their distributions in an IRA or other retirement plan or pay current tax on the distribution, with any gains accumulated over time taxed as capital gains. The income tax portion of the distributions, however, is subject to a 10% penalty if made before normal retirement age.

Note that all contribution limits are subject to certain limitations, although these rarely pose a problem for companies.