摘要：The tax treatment of contributions of employee stock options to registered retirement
savings plans (rrsp s) presents policy anomalies that have remained unresolved for many
years. These anomalies arise in part from the current rules under the Income Tax Act and
also from the valuation method applied by the Canada Revenue Agency (cra). Thus far,
the problem of valuation has been of concern to taxpayers rather than the government,
and they have tended to deal with it by avoiding stock option contributions to rrsp s.
However, with the introduction of tax-free savings accounts (tfsa s) and the planned
inclusion of employee stock options in the list of qualified tfsa investments, the problem
has shifted to the government side. If the cra applies the same method for valuing
contributions of employee stock options to tfsa s, many employee stock options will be
determined to have zero value and hence will use up zero contribution room. As a result,
taxpayers will be able to contribute any number of options to a tfsa without exhausting
the annual contribution limit.
While the cra might remedy the problem by simply changing its administrative policy,
it cannot easily do this in the absence of a statutory valuation rule. The existing, and
limited, case law tends to support undervaluations and provides no framework for a
method that would generate higher valuations. Alternatively, the cra could choose not to
provide any guidance on valuation with respect to stock option contributions to tfsa s,
but this would not provide the clarity that taxpayers and issuers need. The Department of
Finance should therefore develop legislation that provides a more realistic valuation
method for contributions of employee stock options to both rrsp s and tfsa s. Subjective
value to the employee is conceptually appropriate but difficult to administer. As a result,
the authors of this article recommend a method that approximates this value by using
the average of the intrinsic value and the Black-Scholes value.
关键词：Stock options n valuation n tax-free savings accounts n TF SAs n registered
retirement savings plans n RR SPs
