Bailout Bill Imposes Major Comp Restrictions
The drama’s still on as the $700 billion bailout goes to the U.S. House of Representatives today. Worthy of note, however, is what the version passed by the Senate on Wednesday says about executive compensation.
In a nutshell, if the U.S. Department of the Treasury buys distressed assets at an auction from a firm that has sold more than $300,000 in assets, a bunch of restrictions kick in. These include:
- If an executive has a golden parachute and leaves the firm for any reason other than retirement, that golden parachute is levied a 20 percent excise tax.
- Tax deductions would be limited for compensation above $500,000.
Those are rather large twists in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 also known as H.R. 1424. Worth a peek.
(Image by ThomasHawk, via Flickr, CC 2.0)
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This post first appeared in BNET’s The Corner Office.
Peter Galuszka is a Virginia-based journalist with more than three decades of experience, including 15 years at BusinessWeek, during which he was twice Moscow Bureau Chief and International News Editor in New York.
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