A worked example

Thirty days on the 83(b)

Dev, 33, is incorporating and taking 2,000,000 founder shares at $0.001 on a four-year vest with a one-year cliff, in a company they expect to climb about 5x a year toward a Series A.

“Does filing the 83(b) actually matter — and what if the company doesn't take off?”

What the projection shows

Both directions, because it is not the one-way door the folklore suggests. Filed, the whole grant is taxed once at a spread of nearly zero. Not filed, every vesting tranche is ordinary income at what the stock is worth that year — tax on paper gains that cannot be sold. But where the price stays flat, the election has bunched the same income into a single year and doing nothing wins.