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Google Businesses The Internet The Almighty Buck

Google Founders Cut Salaries to $1 652

Posted by Zonk from the good-and-evil dept.
GeneralCern writes "MSNBC Reports that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and CEO Eric Schmidt all slashed their salaries to $1 last year. Since you do not have to pay FICA, Medicare, or income taxes on the capital gains associated with stock sales, they stand to substantially decrease their tax burden. Is this a breach of the company's "do no evil" mission statement, or just an example of people who love their jobs so much they don't need to be paid to go to work?" Update: 04/09 13:11 GMT by H :And don't trust the above tax lines; it all depends on how sales are done; moreover when you are worth X amount with stock, I suspect the "tax burden" of what is, relatively speaking, a salary that's small compared to networth isn't a substantial impact. Sorry folks; poor story.
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Google Founders Cut Salaries to $1 More

Google Founders Cut Salaries to $1

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  • What does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cowboy76Spain ( 815442 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @07:57AM (#12186274)
    They will get paid by stock options and alike, paying much less taxes for the same income... anyway, I think it is more a PR stunt ("we work because we are fierce of our product") than any other thing...
    • "we work because we are fierce of our product"
      That's a new way of using English, lol.
      "We're passionate about what we do!" might have been more what you were trying to say.

      *chuckles in a friendly manner*

    • If they are only getting $1 p.a. salary, then the only way they're going to be able to afford to eat is to sell stock. Assuming the US tax system is similar enough to how Australia works, I'd think that the proceeds of the stock sales would be taxed very similarly to the way salary income would is, and therefore would be paying for the same government services that anybody else would be. IOW, I'd doubt they are avoiding tax at all.

      What you are worth, and what money you have available to spend are two diff

      • If you have, say, ten million dollars in the proper kind of accounts, you can live on the interest. I think they can eat without selling stock. Most people could live on the interest from $1M.

  • Minimum wage? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @07:57AM (#12186275)
    Does the US have a minumum wage?

    Can you get done for underpaying yourself, or does the wronged party have to complain to start legal action?

    • Re:Minimum wage? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BobTheLawyer ( 692026 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @07:58AM (#12186282)
      In the UK, for example, it's illegal for a company to pay its employees below the minimum wage, even if the employees are also the directors and owners of the company.

      Bit bizarre, really.
      • I know we have a minimum wage here in the UK, but does the US have one? And is it a criminal or civil offence? Will there be legal action without a complaint?

      • Re:Minimum wage? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by NeedleSurfer ( 768029 )
        Not bizarre at all, if every company owner would pay itself below minimum wage the richest people wouldn't pay taxes.

        ...wait they don't anyway...

        Minimum wage wasn't brought forth to help people or take care of the people left back by our society. Minimum wage is the prime example of "using the left to promote the right", now that everyone (but the homeless), even the poorest, have a salary you can take income taxe off a lot more people, and remove that burden from the richest, the one you see as the shap

        • Re:Minimum wage? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by aslate ( 675607 )
          What good would raising the minimum wage to a higher level do? You'll just cause inflation and the new minimum wage will be worth the same as the old one.

          Raise wages, people spend more, prices rise, wages rise...

          The wage-price spiral, enjoy your newfound economic disaster. Alternatively, you raise it and instead of helping all those "poor" people, you'll just make them unemployed because companies can't afford them.

          The minimum wage is to stop the exploitation of workers, not to ensure that they liv

    • Re:Minimum wage? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) * on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:24AM (#12186393)
      "Does the US have a minumum wage?"

      Yes, but that's for hourly wages, not salaries.

      • Re:Minimum wage? (Score:5, Informative)

        by rudbek ( 28000 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @09:51AM (#12186803)
        Actually, it is has nothing to do with salary versus wages. It has do with whether the job description is exempt or non-exempt. Most managerial positions are exempt (meaning minimum wage/overtime etc. don't apply). Just because your paid by salary doesn't mean your not entitled under the law to overtime. Lots of white collar employees are incorrectly considered exempt by their employers. Unfortunately for Slashdot, sys admins by definition are non-exempt.

        Also - it is stupid to say that accepting one dollar is a tax avoidance scheme. Earning less is always and option but not a smart way to lower your tax bill. Refusing to accept a salary because 37% of it (or whatever the top rate is) will go to the IRS is sort of silly if you are trying to maximize your after tax salary. After all 63% of it (minus state income tax) is still yours. You have more not less by accepting the salary. I'd fire my accountant for coming up with a tax strategy that resulted in me having less money.

        • Re:Minimum wage? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 )
          ----Also - it is stupid to say that accepting one dollar is a tax avoidance scheme. Earning less is always and option but not a smart way to lower your tax bill. Refusing to accept a salary because 37% of it (or whatever the top rate is) will go to the IRS is sort of silly if you are trying to maximize your after tax salary. After all 63% of it (minus state income tax) is still yours. You have more not less by accepting the salary.------

          that's only true if you're not in a position where you can funnel fund
        • Tax AVOIDANCE is lawful and completely honorable.
          Tax EVASION is illegal.

          The payment of taxes is not a moral oblication, and "fair share" is not a legal term. It is used to intimidate and confuse people.

          "The legal right of an individual to decrease or ALTOGETHER AVOID his/her taxes by means which the law permits cannot be doubted" Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U.S. 465

          ----------
          Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co., 157 US 429 (1895)

          This decision states that it is unconstitutional to impose the income tax

    • Re:Minimum wage? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      > Does the US have a minumum wage?

      We have a minimum wage for hourly employees, but there's a loophole: salaried
      employees (those paid by the month or by the year irrespective of how many
      hours they work) are, as near as I can determine, completely exempt from it.
      I haven't actually read the law, but it seems that when a formerly hourly
      employee gets promoted to a salaried position, they always seem to suddenly
      go from working 35-39 hours a week (because after 40 you have to pay an hourly
      employee half again
    • Yes, the US has a minimum wage of $5.15/hr, but that's a wage. These guys are salaried -- they're paid for their total work throughout the year, nor for their work per hour. So minimum wage doesn't apply.

  • That's it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rui Lopes ( 599077 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @07:58AM (#12186278) Homepage
    Now i don't want to be google's next CEO any more.

  • Useful google search feature (Score:3, Funny)

    by alanw ( 1822 ) * <alan@wylie.me.uk> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:00AM (#12186288) Homepage
    If you do a google search for "define:word", it tells you what the word means

    e.g.
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define%3Abreach [google.co.uk]
    or
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define%3Abreech [google.co.uk]

    • OK. I'll try again, without the subtle sarcasm. In the original item, the word "breech" (the rear opening of a gun where bullets are loaded) is used, where the word "breach" (a disregard of rules) is meant. Still off-topic?

  • Uncle Sam (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I thought screwing Uncle Sam was "doing no evil"... especially around tax time.

  • Doing less evil (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Green Salad ( 705185 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:00AM (#12186293) Homepage
    Paying less taxes is funding less evil. What more can one say?
    • Paying less taxes only forces the hand of the government to choose between security (armed services, intelligence, defense) and general welfare (health care, education, infrastructure).

      Of course, if you pay more taxes, some of it will end up supporting things you don't like, such as war or abstinence education, but it also helps to pay for the welfare of the state.

      Pay less taxes, and everyone loses.
    • Grow up perhaps? The US Government isn't evil. It just does what it needs to do, like any other government.

      Gosh things change when you quit approaching them from a childs perspective now don't they?
  • I have long given up my hopes that google will be a "nice" corporation. They have prooven over the last few months that profit is #1, like any other corporation. Like any other corporation: they should not be trusted.
    • They are a company. Their sole point of existance is to make money. They aren't a charity FFS.

      They have employees that need to be paid, and they have probably enormous bills that need to be paid. Its going to be in their interest to make money.

      I think as companies go, they are pretty generous.. they still get respect from me.

      • Re:They are a corporation. Profits"doing no evil" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @09:59AM (#12186839) Homepage
        They are a company. Their sole point of existance is to make money. They aren't a charity FFS.

        What is it with you Americans and this dogged obsession with "companies only exist to make money"?

        Making money isn't the sole point of a company. Companies exist to fulfil their owners objectives as expressed by the mission statement. A side product of fulfilling those objectives is to make money, because an unprofitable company won't fulfil the objectives for very long.

        Money is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. Companies exist to make cars, build furniture, produce electricity, sell food, provide services, and literally 1000s of other purposes. Making money is part of that process, but it is not the actual objective.

        When CEOs forget the company's objectives and pursue making money, that's when a company fails. Witness what's happening to HP; Carly tried to make more profit at the expense of the companies objectives. Thanks to her, HP might as well be dead. All the brilliance that once embodied "all things HP" has vanished. They are now a hollow shell of their former selves; little more than an expensive kind of Dell. Companies that focus on their objectives make money without even trying; look at Google.

        For an even better example, look at Apple. In the mid-90s, during the absence of Steve, Apple lost sight of their objective; building the best personal computers. They started to produce some godawful crap like the PowerMac 4400. They wanted to make more money by producing a "cheap Mac" and selling to a larger audience. Combined with a whole lot of other boneheaded schemes to "make money quick", Apple almost went bankrupt. That's because the guys in charge never understood what Apple was all about.

        Steve comes back and reinstates his vision of producing the best personal computers. Bam, Apple is back in the black and the industry darling again. Is Steve a brainiac? No. Is he just lucky? No. He simply knows to focus on the company's core objectives and that's why Steve's companies always succeed. Whether he's at Pixar or Apple, he pursues the objectives first, knowing full well that the money will come after.

        Stop pursuing the money. Counterintuitively that's not how you make money! Make a great product, or provide a great service, and money will come naturally. That's how great companies and great people manage to succeed.

        • What is it with you Americans and this dogged obsession with "companies only exist to make money"? [..]

          Money is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. Companies exist to make cars, build furniture, produce electricity, sell food, provide services, and literally 1000s of other purposes. Making money is part of that process, but it is not the actual objective.

          When companies are privately owned and are run by some visionary like Henry Ford who wanted to mass produce cars, or Wozniak and Jobs who w
          • When companies are privately owned and are run by some visionary like Henry Ford who wanted to mass produce cars, or Wozniak and Jobs who wanted to mass produce computers, yes, companies are about making products. But publicly owned companies really do have only one purpose: to maximize the return to the stockholders.

            Yeah, which is why even though there is some public ownership of Google, more than 50% of the voting shares are privately held, and Google specifically warns investors that their goals for th
    • Could you describe the things Google has done that are not "nice"?

      I haven't seen any Google products that aren't pretty darn impressive, and free for use by the public.

      Yes, they make their money off advertising, and that's great. It gives us free toys and advertisers get exposure, just like old-fashioned over the air TV.

      What's wrong with making money by providing great services? If they lose money, they can't provide the services anymore :-(.

      D

  • What is Slashdot now? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BristolCream ( 102658 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:01AM (#12186298)
    It's neither a breech of "do no evil" nor an example of their love of work... it's a legitimate way of avoiding paying tax which is standard practice for business leaders everywhere.

    Total non-story; yet completely on message for the nonsense that Slashdot has decended into over the past few years. News for nerds? Barely. A barrage of pointless bollocks? Definitely.
    • I thought tax evasion was a crime. I guess that only applies to certain methods of it though. We wouldn't want the high income earners to actually help the rest of society, now would we?

    • Re:What is Slashdot now? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chrome ( 3506 ) <chrome AT stupendous DOT net> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @09:08AM (#12186553) Homepage Journal
      Yup.

      So far this year we've had lots of advertisements for Thinkgeek, fud about google at every turn, fud about microsoft, stupid stories that the GPL is going to require companies to pay money ... um ...

      You know, I am one of the first people who used/read slashdot. You can tell, you know, by the 4 digit user number.

      Slashdot is sucking. Hard. Its been bad for at least 2-3 years now. Its not getting any better. Regurgitating stories that are from The Register/Engaged/Ars Technica/etc is NOT news for nerds! Its not even news when its 4 DAYS OLD!. If I wanted a syndicated news site, I'd go to one of the 5000 that are out there, or just do an RSS feed of what I want, NOT have it delayed by Slashdot - with editorials that twist the story or even miss the point.

      COME ON. /. can do better than this.

      Agree with parent 100%.
      • Normally, I'd completely agree with you. Some of the stories of the past few months have kind of irked me, like when they posted the Tsunami deep see life [slashdot.org] urban legend as actual news or when Taco snapped at the general readership [slashdot.org] for complaining about dupe articles.

        But one thing you've really got to like about this story is the way Hemos handled it.
        • He apologized for the error.
        • He issued a correction.
        • He did both in a timely manner.

        I don't mind an occassional slip or error as long as they handle

      • Re:What is Slashdot now? (Score:4, Informative)

        by nEoN nOoDlE ( 27594 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @02:56PM (#12188371)
        I usually don't read the story, but read the comments. While Slashdot sucks, there's usually a bunch of people who actually know what the story is talking about and will post the explanation and their opinions... Which is what I come for.

  • Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m101 ( 834048 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:02AM (#12186301)
    What a ridiculous post. How could you possibly draw an association between minimizing personal income tax and Google turning 'evil'.

  • It's not like they're starving. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fyz ( 581804 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:03AM (#12186306)
    Sergey Brin is, according to Forbes, already worth $7.2B. Wouldn't it be great to be so incredibly rich that you did'nt have to worry about personal income ever again?

    Anyway, this is PR that's probably worth way more than the salary itself. Steve Jobs does the same thing, IIRC.
    • Steve Jobs does the same thing, IIRC.

      He does, and when he first came back to Apple, he refused bonuses and other compensation. But that has changed in the mean time.

      In 2004, he only took a $1 salary, according to the company's 2004 annual report. But in the past two years, he's accepted bonuses and other compensation of about $3.5 million, and he's been awarded more than $80 million in stock awards and options.

      Here's a link to the 2004 Apple annual report's section about executive compensation:

      http:// [sec.gov]

  • False premise of article poster - capital gains (Score:4, Informative)

    by gorim ( 700913 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:04AM (#12186310)
    One *always* pays taxes on capitals gains from stock sales. Has nothing to do with salary.

    Is it me or does the article poster spin from the left and ignore facts ?

    • Not exactly false premise (Score:5, Informative)

      by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:11AM (#12186340)
      The article poster stated that you don't pay FICA tax (another word for social security tax), medicare tax or income tax on stock appreciations. That is completely true and all of those are different than capital gains tax - which is what they would pay based on appreciation in their stock price.

      I believe the article poster's premise is that they're becoming ungodly rich because of stock appreciation and that they cut their income to $1 per year to avoid contributing to society in the way that the rest of us do.

      If I had to pick a reason, I'd say it's more of a PR stunt to make the Google founders appear frugal (or froogle if you like) and make it seem like the money hasn't gone to their head. Many other CEO-types have done this (including Steve Jobs [yahoo.com]).
      • I believe the article poster's premise is that they're becoming ungodly rich because of stock appreciation and that they cut their income to $1 per year to avoid contributing to society in the way that the rest of us do.

        It could be taken that way, I think.

        Certainly that's why that great champion of the "little guy", John Edwards, cut his salary and took his pay in capital gains from stock in a dummy S corporation. [townhall.com]

        He was able to cheat those suckers at the US Treasury out of $738,000 in Medicare taxes

      • Re:Not exactly false premise (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Lawrence_Bird ( 67278 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:44AM (#12186467) Homepage
        yes and the poster has their head up their ass too. Read
        the article. Two were making 150k the other 250k a year.
        Given the large wealth they have in the stock do you think
        they really give a rats about 60K in taxes?

        Does the poster think the same thing about Steve Jobs?

        When high ranking execs take no salary it is to say to the
        shareholders 'we only do well for ourself if we do well for
        you'. The could easily have turned around and said the
        company is a success we should be getting paid at least
        1M in salary a year, sucking cash out of the company instead
        of the stock market.

        Slashdot posters need to spend less time at democraticunderground.com and dailykos

    • Re:False premise of article poster - capital gains (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:40AM (#12186450) Journal
      One *always* pays taxes on capitals gains from stock sales. Is it me or does the article poster spin from the left and ignore facts ?
      Is it me or does the right always try to blame the left, even if there's not a fucking issue to place blame about?

      Talk about false premises, your statement assumes that the Google guys are going to be selling their stock sometime soon. If you'd RTFA, you'd know that Page and Brin earned 150K a year, and Schmidt earned 250K/year. Cutting their salaries to $1 does mean a substantial tax savings, as the poster indicated.

      Not that it really matters when you're worth what these guys are worth. I think they're doing it as a statement, not to save a few inconsequential thousand dollars in taxes.

      Your attempt to politicize the issue is really scummy.
      • Talk about false premises, your statement assumes that the Google guys are going to be selling their stock sometime soon.

        That one buck a year they're earning doesn't go very far. Chances are they'll liquidate some stock every year for income, and have to pay capital gains on that.

        If you'd RTFA, you'd know that Page and Brin earned 150K a year, and Schmidt earned 250K/year.Cutting their salaries to $1 does mean a substantial tax savings, as the poster indicated.

        Going from $150,000 to $1 is a 99.999333
    • One *always* pays taxes on capitals gains from stock sales. Has nothing to do with salary.

      As someone else pointed out, you only pay 25%. But more importantly, you pay no taxes until you actually sell; so most of the money gets a tax-free ride, growing tax-free if the stock goes up, until they retire or whatever billionaires do with their money.

      At their wealth level, salary is completely meaningless. $1 million is less than 0.02% of their net worth. So any salary at all is just a token statement. S

    • Don't try to turn this into a partisan issue just becuse you disagree with the poster. I knew the poster was bull as well, and I'm as far left as they come.

  • Evil? (Score:3, Funny)

    by sugapablo ( 600023 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:05AM (#12186318) Homepage
    It's never evil to stick it to the man!

  • "don't be evil" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by presroi ( 657709 ) <neubau@presroi.de> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:05AM (#12186320) Homepage
    Well, "don't be evil" does not mean "be stupid" or "be kind to IRS".

    It's actually the other way around:
    This way they are saving taxes which gives them the opportunity to be even more not-evil to all the people.

    Except the IRS, or course.

  • If a $1 Salary Makes Google Evil... (Score:5, Informative)

    by WhatAmIDoingHere ( 742870 ) * <sexwithanimals@gmail.com> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:05AM (#12186322) Homepage
    Apple [yahoo.com]has been evil for a few years.

  • Blame The Government (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mikeplokta ( 223052 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:07AM (#12186324)
    It's just one of the many idiocies that arise from taxing "unearned" income less than "earned" income. Income from all sources should be taxed the same, to avoid giving people reason to come up with complicated schemes to move their income between categories. But given that the tax system sucks, you can't blame people for taking advantage of that fact.
    • Exactly, mod parent up, etc.

      This is something that people that actually own companies (directly, via stocks,etc.) do all the time. I, trough salaried work, pay taxes up to the roof and can't avoid them (and wouldn't even want to avoid them if the tax system was fair and the social beneficts as a whole were as intended), but earnings from stock trade speculation are much less (depending on the country, if at all) taxed, as are earnings from companies.
    • Jeez, I feel like I'm the only dirty capitalist left on /.

      ...arise from taxing "unearned" income less than "earned" income.

      Technically, income from real estate rentals, dividends and capital gains in the stock market, and the like aren't "unearned," they are "passive" income and "portfolio" income, respectively. The government calls wage labor (which is what it really is, whether you're salaried or not) "earned" income to distinguish it from the other types, not to imply that said other types of incom

  • How stupid are you? Or are you a troll? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BlueHands ( 142945 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:07AM (#12186329)
    Look,even if I pay 75% tax on 200,000 dollars I STILL MADE MONEY! 25% of X == > 0 if X !=0. They got payed less, how is that anything bad?? Sad that the posts on /. are trolls these days.....

    Does that mean that in soviet Russia Slashdot posts you?

    Oh,for the love of gos and country, kill me.

    • Re:How stupid are you? Or are you a troll? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rueba ( 19806 ) * on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:22AM (#12186382)
      THANK YOU!!

      Amazing how many people are willing to leap to the "GOOGLE IS EVIL" conclusion without thinking it through.

      (1) These guys are all billionaires. Saving a few hundred thousand dollars on taxes is very unlikely to be their main motivation.

      (2) Their absolute income will still go DOWN, regardless of how much they save in taxes. It would be a pretty poor move to quit your job just so you could save on taxes!

      I think they are just saying, "Hey, we're rich. We don't really need this money so screw it."

      Not really a big deal, but definitely not evil either.
      • Yes, it seems that either a huge number of the article submittters, or one of the editors really has it out to prove google wrong about "not being evil". Kinda bizzare if you ask me. When google turns evil, we'll know it, because it won't be some little thing like guys cutting salaries.
  • Google has agreed to reimburse Schmidt up to $2.1 million this year for using his jet.

    2.1 million seems a little bit higher then $1 to me.

    But even so, they're able to survive on google stock. If google's stock goes down, their wage goes down (I'm guessing here, to me stock seems like gambling and make-believe). So they have quite a big incentive to ensure google's stock stays up (wonder how that will impact their do-no-evil mantra). This is nothing but a tax trick, which CEOs are reknown for doing. Of c

    • Because, if they are only getting a salary of $1 p.a., that is the only cash they'll have available to buy food with. I suppose they could eat their Google stock certificates.

      Of course, the stock certificates are probably a bit tasteless, so if they need money to buy food etc., they'll need to sell some of their Google stock. Then the government has a tax go at the gains from those profits made on the stock sales.

      This is the third time I'm making this point in this thread. It surprises me that a lot of

  • Who needs a Salary? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NekoXP ( 67564 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:08AM (#12186333) Homepage

    Seriously why would you need a salary when you have the credit rating associated
    with owning Google?

    Steve Jobs is in the same boat; he worked for the use of a private jet one year,
    he doesn't need a salary - he founded Apple, Pixar and continues to run both.
    I doubt his wallet is dusty dry after The Incredibles or the iPod.

    Neko

  • Geez (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Megane ( 129182 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:09AM (#12186337)
    Someone has to find the bad in everything. First we get people complaining about C*Os and their multimillion dollar salaries and comparable golden parachutes. Now we get some who reduce their salary to $1 (not the first to do this, by the way) meaning that their income is totally defined by the performance of the company, and someone whines that they're dodging taxes.

    Quit your whining, people. Oh, and look up the "Minimum Alternative Tax" while you're at it. It may have been a good idea at first, but it's getting to be a real mess these days.

  • eh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) * <mark AT seventhcycle DOT net> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:12AM (#12186344) Homepage
    The way I see it...

    Since they own close to 2/3 of the company, I'm sure they feel that what they do for the company affects their personal wealth a LOT more than a simple salary does.

    To me, this tells me that they're vesting their livelihood in this company. And why shouldn't they? It seems that google adds new features to their search on a weekly, if not daily basis.
    ------

    Oh yeah, did you see MSN's "billionaire hotornot" slideshow? Don't you, as a reader, feel a little patronized there trying to choose which of the capitalist elite are the best looking? Where's Mr Gates, for that matter?

  • Not so sure. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by oozer ( 132881 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:15AM (#12186358)
    Coincidentally I was just reading this article from Inc. magazine last night.

    http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050401/priority.ht ml

    The IRS prosecuted Menard for paying a large salary and no dividend because that arrangement results in paying less tax. See the article for details.

  • Of Course Not: Making Money Isn't Evil (Score:3, Insightful)

    by reallocate ( 142797 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @08:15AM (#12186359)
    Only silly dweebs would think this is "evil". The amount of money they got from their salaries, and the amount of taxes they paid on those saleries, were miniscule compared with their equity in Google stock. They aren't the first wealthy people to take a token salary from the company they founded.

    So, get over it. Making Money Isn't Evil.

  • 1$ Salary (Score:2, Informative)

    by Hackenslacker ( 836195 )
    Isn't this what Steve Jobs has been doing for years?
  • The tax rate for the options is probably going to roll in at 15% - certainly a lower tax rate than had it been 'earned income' (salary), but much more than zero. These rates were lowered in the 2003 tax revision - they had been 20% (there's a lower tax bracket as well, but I don't think it applies in this situation :-) ).
    You only pay social security on the first $90k of earned income - so that tax relief in this case is pretty negligible (compared to the 15% of some huge number).
    Of course, this assumes t
  • I don't follow the conspiracy-theory part of the /. posting -- if you give up $250K in salary to save paying $100K in taxes, how are you ending up ahead financially?

    They'd be getting the capital-gains deductions on their stock and options either way, unless there's some secret twist in U.S. tax law.

  • Tax Minimization Is Not A Crime (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Saturday April 09, 2005 @09:08AM (#12186549) Homepage
    > Since you do not have to pay FICA, Medicare, or
    > income taxes on the capital gains associated
    > with stock sales, they stand to substantially
    > decrease their tax burden.

    This is true. One does not pay taxes on income that one does not receive.

    > Is this a breech of the company's "do no evil"
    > mission statement...

    Sigh. If they had kept their salaries they would have received salary income, paid taxes on it, and _also_ made money on stock sales. Now they will only make money on stock sales (and pay the relevant taxes). How is the latter more "evil" than the former?

    > ...or just an example of people who love their
    > jobs so much they don't need to be paid to go
    > to work?"

    It is an example of how some people have chosen to manage their money. I know damn well that if you could rearrange your income so as to increase the amount left after taxes you would.

  • The Objectivists are right. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrebleJunkie ( 208060 ) <ezahurakNO@SPAMatlanticbb.net> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @09:25AM (#12186635) Homepage Journal
    You guys *are* a bunch of looters.

  • A way of avoiding CEO posturing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alispguru ( 72689 ) <bob@bane.me@com> on Saturday April 09, 2005 @12:41PM (#12187631) Journal
    In the CEO biz, your total compensation is the way you get compared to other CEOs. It appears to be a kind of penis-measuring exercise (female CEOs aside) - after all, does a $20M CEO really work twice as hard as a $10M CEO? The usual justification for big CEO pay is "everyone else does it".

    I hope the $1/year salary is their way of saying "we may be a public company, but we aren't going to play those games - we run Google because we want to solve hard problems and make money at it, not so we can wave our paychecks at Yahoo's management and laugh about how small they are."

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