Honestly the whole startup equity / tax stuff in the US makes my head spin. There's a really dumb situation where equity grants are considered income. So if a startup gave you $1m in stock, from the IRS' perspective, you just made $1m in income for the current tax year. You now have a tax bill of like $500k, but the startup is private so you can't sell the stock to obtain the money. Basically you have to somehow find $500k cash to pay your taxes or you're screwed. So in order to avoid this, there's these contracts where you don't technically own the stock until the company goes public, but that opens you up to the risk that if the contract isn't ironclad they can take back the stock, or do something shady like a debt or IP transfer to basically make your shares worthless.
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