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Google Founders Cut Salaries to $1

Posted by Zonk on 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.

5 of 652 comments (clear)

  1. Minimum wage? by bcmm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

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    1. Re:Minimum wage? by BobTheLawyer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. What is Slashdot now? by BristolCream · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. A way of avoiding CEO posturing... by alispguru · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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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    To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
  4. Re:"do no evil" from a company that patents algori by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As your lawyer friend said, tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance, however, is not only legal it's encouraged -- hell, even the President wants you to pay as little tax as possible (if you're already rich). That's all these Google folks are doing. Fortunately, the law doesn't care if you're rich, even the poor can avoid taxes if they're careful. Back when I was in school and filed a 1040EZ I was able to cut my tax burden at least a little each year; now, with a house to kick me into itemized deductions, I milk it for all it's worth (e.g., don't throw anything away -- take it to Goodwill and let them throw it away; meanwhile, you claim the donation.

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    If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.