Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze2
Weird question and I don't even know who to ask. I work for a private company head office in the US. I believe looking to possibly go public or sell at some point in the future. I got some shares granted that I assume they are worthless at this point. Am I on the hook for any liability or anything. I just have zero expertise in the finance world. No one just gives you something without a downside. I don't even know what I'm asking.
|
Well, you will likely have a little bit of homework to do and information to compile and keep on hand to make sure you have the appropriate ACB on these shares when you ultimately dispose of them. You shouldn't get screwed by owning these, it's the opposite.
Foreign (to Canada) private company shares aiming for an IPO, it's going to get a bit weird, so make it easier on your tax preparer for a future tax filing. The situation I ran into, there was 3/4 of an inch of paperwork for an employment situation that lasted less than 10 months, to get the appropriate information for the ACB of the swapped shares.
- Any contractual shred of paper that mentions who, what, when, where, why and how you'll end up with these private company shares. (ie: Your employment contract and other docs)
- Details, dates, investment statements, potentially employment slips (if the US company issues you a T4) for the value you received as compensation for these shares (depends if straight shares, ESO or RSU etc.)
- If share swap when company goes public/gets acquired, every shred of paper that discusses what is going on with your shares. (Sometimes Compushare swaps with no investment statement in between)
- Perhaps information that facilitates keeping track of the value of shares based on the weighted average method if there might be a plan to sell shares, but not the entirety of your holdings (hard to randomly sell private company shares anyways). You also might not want to just rely on date you received shares at FX rate, because in some situations, the value showing up on the T4 slip for the ESO/RSU was higher than that calculation and/or the investment statements (ACB calculated too low, thus double pay taxes on that portion of error).