Plan your Canva NSO exercise

Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPO

Canva is pre-IPO. Plan your NSO exercise tax (federal, state, FICA) at any expected valuation.

Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools

Your grant

Tax inputs

Hold strategy

1 yr
20%
10.0%

Best after-tax payout — at year 1

$199,194

Sell + invest wins by $20,795 over Hold 1 yr.

Your NSO exercise pushes your top federal rate from 24% to 35%. Hover the Federal value below for the bracket-by-bracket slicing.

Sell + invest

Best payout
Bargain element (sale − strike)$350,000
Federal
State
Medicare−$5,075
Additional Medicare−$3,150
Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0%$18,583
LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT)−$5,222
Net at year 1$199,194

Sell every share immediately; invest the after-tax cash at the market return for 1 yr, then liquidate. Diversified — no single-stock concentration risk.

Exercise + hold 1 yr

Sale proceeds (year 1)
LTCG tax (federal + state + NIIT)$0
Net at year 1$178,399

Sold 2,677 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 2,323 shares held 1 yr for LTCG.

Social Security + Medicare are payroll taxes (collectively called FICA) — they apply because you're exercising as a current employee.

Both columns are stated in year-1 dollars: sell-now proceeds compound at the market return and pay LTCG on the gain at year 1; any cash paid out of pocket on the hold side carries the same opportunity cost.

Net at year N — by hold period

Sell + investExercise + hold
$0$54K$108K$162K$216KYr 1Yr 2

Estimates only. Excludes AMT (NSOs do not trigger AMT), state-AMT, multi-state moves, and disqualifying-disposition edge cases. Not financial advice.

Canva is a pre-IPO Cloud/SaaS company. NSO exercise creates ordinary income on the bargain element — federal, state, and FICA — at the price on the day you exercise. The calculator works at any valuation, so you can model your exercise cost at the current 409A FMV, an expected IPO price, or post-IPO scenarios.

All Canva tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.

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