When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg paid six cents a pop for 60 million options over Facebook stock which was selling in the IPO for $38 shares it must have seemed like quite a deal.
The US internal revenue service certainly agrees and because of the way it recognises income the boy wonder is facing a tax bill of over a billion dollars.
But as Robert Wood at Forbes points out, Zuckerberg is probably not sweating too much on the bill.
“Much of the kerfuffle over how much tax Mark Zuckerberg is paying seems a little silly. Do you feel sorry for him? Not likely. Is he a patriot for writing a big check to the IRS? Not really. Besides, much was done via withholding. ”
As Wood notes, it was after all, all part of his Facebook pay. “And Facebook gets a tax deduction for every dollar.”
Post IPO Zuckerberg was sitting on a paper fortune of about $13 billion hence the notional 2012 tax bill of about $1.1 billion, but of course the view from atop that mountain of cash isn’t quite so panoramic as in the heady days post-float - not now that the share price has drifted back to $27.
Still, he’s not complaining.
Indeed as Marketwatch points out, the Facebook CEO has been using the tax rules to spread the love around a bit. “Zuckerberg does have some deductions, however, most notably a $500 million donation to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.”
And as Opposing Views notes, there’s an upside to that kind of tax assessment. It quotes Stan Pollack, who it describes as a San Francisco area accountant for technology workers saying, “Most people are thrilled, to tell you the truth.”
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