Plan your Canva NSO exercise
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPOCanva is pre-IPO. Plan your NSO exercise tax (federal, state, FICA) at any expected valuation.
Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools
Your grant
Seeded from secondary-market data, as of Jun 11, 2026
Tax inputs
Hold strategy
Best after-tax payout — at year 1
$5,800,100
Sell + invest wins by $5,618,123 over Hold 1 yr.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Sell + invest
Best payout| Bargain element (sale − strike) | $11,400,700 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$165,310 |
| Additional Medicare | −$102,606 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $542,647 |
| LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT) | −$169,022 |
| Net at year 1 | $5,800,100 |
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 | $181,977 |
Sold 2,631 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 2,369 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
Estimates only. Excludes AMT (NSOs do not trigger AMT), state-AMT, multi-state moves, and disqualifying-disposition edge cases. Not financial advice.
You calculated one NSO decision. The beta plans NSOs alongside RSUs and ISOs in a single multi-year tax plan.
Request beta access →About Canva
Canva is a privately held Cloud/SaaS company, incorporated in AU and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Last reported secondary-market price: $2,290.14 per share (as of 2026-06-11). Your own 409A may differ.
$42B+; AU-founded, US ops.
Equity grants at Canva typically include incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs).
Canva Pty Ltd. is an Australian multinational software company launched in 2013 based in Sydney, Australia. The platform provides a graphic design platform to create visual content for presentations, websites, and other digital products. Its uses include templates for presentations, posters, and social media content, as well as photo and video editing functionality.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Founded 2013 in Sydney by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, Canva turned browser-based graphic design into a templates-and-drag-drop workflow now used by 220M+ monthly active users. The platform layers Canva for Teams, Visual Suite, and Magic Studio generative AI on top of the core editor, and absorbed Affinity from Serif for roughly $380M in March 2024 to court professional designers. Secondary tenders have repriced the company from $32B in August 2024 to $42B in April 2025, with reports pointing to $49B by July 2025 amid sustained IPO speculation.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · reuters.com
Equity comp at Canva
- Australian-headquartered (Sydney) with February 2025 corporate restructure into US Delaware parent Canva, Inc.; historically granted both options and RSUs under Australian ESS rules, with US employees moving toward US-style NSO/ISO grants post-restructure. The Australian Tax Office issued CR 2025/35 and CR 2025/36 covering scrip-for-scrip rollover for AU residents. Multiple secondary tenders provide periodic liquidity ahead of an expected 2026 IPO.
- Recent share-sale events (industry term: tender offers):
- Oct 2024: $32B implied valuation · secondarylink.com
- Aug 2025: $42B implied valuation · bloomberg.com
Sources: secfi.com · fortune.com
Researched 2026-05-11.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Canva.
Canva 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.
Example: at Canva's last reported price of $2,290.14, exercising 5,000 NSOs with a $687.04 strike creates a $8,015,500 bargain element, taxed as ordinary income on the day you exercise. Combined federal + state + FICA on that bargain typically lands between $2,164,185 and $3,606,975 depending on your bracket and state. The calculator above computes the exact figure for your situation and compares selling now vs. holding through the long-term capital-gains threshold.
All Canva tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Canva equity questions
- How is a Canva NSO exercise taxed?
- Exercising a non-qualified stock option (NSO) creates ordinary income on the bargain element (the price on the day you exercise minus your strike), subject to federal income tax, state income tax, and FICA. The calculator above computes that tax for your Canva grant and compares selling the shares now against holding past the one-year mark for long-term capital-gains treatment.
- Does Canva grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Canva typically takes the form of incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs). Incentive stock options can trigger the alternative minimum tax (AMT) when you exercise.
- Are Canva shares eligible for QSBS?
- They might be. Qualified small business stock (QSBS) under Internal Revenue Code Section 1202 can exclude federal tax on much of the gain when shares were acquired at original issuance from a C-corporation while its gross assets were under $50 million, and held at least five years. Whether your Canva shares qualify turns on when you acquired them and the company's asset size at that time.
One piece of the puzzle.
OptionsAhoy plans your Canva equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.