Forum Moderators: goodroi
The three executives who run Google Inc. each drew a salary last year of $1. But Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin more than made up for it in the large stakes they own in the online search leader, which has made them billionaires.Besides his $1 salary, Schmidt, who was No. 116 on Forbes magazine's most recent ranking of American billionaires, received a bonus of $1,723 and "other compensation" valued at $555,742, according to a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The bulk of that other compensation, $532,755, was for personal security.
Google CEO, Co-Founders Get $1 Salary [news.yahoo.com]
My heart bleeds for them. At a $1.00 he is right
up there with 70% of the Adsense publishers.
I wonder if they setup direct deposit for that, if they were cut a check, or if they took it out of petty cash.
If I did that with my own compensation to avoid paying social security taxes...just paint a big bullseye on me for an IRS audit.
Especially while they perform as they do and thus feed thousands of families and tax accounts many other ways.
Their wealth might seem out of proportion for what they've accomplished but then again they could just have chosen to come home 5pm every night and not make Google a pretty crazy out-of-proportion-value-machine so many folks prosper from (including anyone with stakes in that company).
It is more than paradox to debate (even in fun) this symbolic $1 salary knowing that it wouldn't make a story at all if they took out 10 million each on top like (almost) every other top manager in the world.
Especially while they perform as they do and thus feed thousands of families and tax accounts many other ways.
Small fry S corps and LLC's like mine (myself being the sole stockholder) put food on the table of millions of households across the US. However, out of proportion active vs. passive income very potentially has very dire consequences. Never mind the fact that I employ about 50 very highly skilled and paid personnel.
What a lot of people dont getthat they and alot of otehr poeple people like Steve Jobs Are avoiding paying tax (the NI stamp in the uk) and I belive in the states this is the type of tax that pays for medicare and vets benefits.
So you could argue they are not paying their share and as at least on of the google founders is an expat maybe not the most sensible thing to do.
I belive in the states this is the type of tax that pays for medicare and vets benefits.
It's the social security and medicare tax which totals 15.7%, but is capped at the first %90,000 of wages. At the most it saves the founders a little over $14,000. To them this is a drop in the ocean...to me it's a fortune. My point is how is it that a managing officer of a big corporation can benefit from taking a $1 salary and the rest in dividends and stock sale...and the rest of us little people can't?
#1 Google does not pay a dividend... there for they are not getting paid in dividends. They were not awared any options either.
#2 They do make money on stock sales but is this no different than an investment you or I could have made? Its there right they made an investment and now there choosing to cash out some of that appreciated investment.
#3 Couldn't you just get back to work on your site and try and make it better, rather than subconsciously blaming your sites short comings in income, and quality on the founders and CEO's $1 a year salary?
[edited by: Dpeper at 9:23 pm (utc) on April 5, 2007]
#3 Couldn't you just get back to work on your site and try and make it better, rather than subconsciously blaming your sites short comings in income, and quality on the founders and CEO's $1 a year salary?
$59 million in annual sales is a shortcoming? Just pointing out the obvious bias in the tax code that makes me declare the maximum active income weighted against passive income dividends and capital gains.
You missed my point by a mile.
