Plan your Carta NSO exercise
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPOCarta 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 9, 2026
Tax inputs
Hold strategy
Best after-tax payout — at year 1
$68,675
Hold 1 yr wins by $48,076 over Sell + invest.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Sell + invest
| Bargain element (sale − strike) | $33,850 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$491 |
| Additional Medicare | −$305 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $1,922 |
| LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT) | −$540 |
| Net at year 1 | $20,598 |
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
Best payout| Sale proceeds (year 1) | |
| LTCG tax (federal + state + NIIT) | −$19,329 |
| Net at year 1 | $68,675 |
Sold 3,854 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 1,146 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 Carta
Carta is a privately held Fintech company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Last reported secondary-market price: $16.77 per share (as of 2026-06-09). Your own 409A may differ.
Cap table software.
Equity grants at Carta typically include incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs).
eShares, Inc., doing business as Carta, Inc., is a San Francisco, California-based technology company that specializes in capitalization table management and valuation software. The company digitizes paper stock certificates along with stock options, warrants, and derivatives to allow companies, investors, and employees to manage their equity and track company ownership. The company also operated CartaX, a private stock exchange, which was shuttered in 2024.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Henry Ward and Manu Kumar founded Carta, originally eShares, in 2012 to digitize paper stock certificates and replace spreadsheet-based cap tables with auditable, legally compliant software. Companies use Carta to issue equity, model dilution, run 409A valuations, and manage employee option exercises. The platform expanded to serve venture funds with LP portfolio management tools. Carta raised $500 million in a Series G led by Silver Lake in August 2021 at a $7.4 billion valuation, its last disclosed primary round, and reached $442 million in annual recurring revenue in 2024.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · techcrunch.com
Equity comp at Carta
- Carta issues single-trigger RSUs (awards where shares vest and settle immediately on each vesting date, with no separate IPO or acquisition trigger required) to its own employees, providing liquidity through quarterly windows on its own private secondary platform, Carta Liquidity. At each window, Carta withholds shares equal to the employee tax liability and remits taxes directly, so employees receive net shares with no out-of-pocket tax obligation at vest. Current employees may sell up to 20% of vested holdings per window. This structure makes a second liquidity-event trigger unnecessary: liquidity occurs on a schedule rather than only upon an IPO or sale.
- Early exercise is not allowed: you have to wait for shares to vest before you can buy them.
Sources: carta.com · carta.com · henrysward.medium.com
Researched 2026-05-10.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Carta.
Carta 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 Carta's last reported price of $16.77, exercising 5,000 NSOs with a $5.03 strike creates a $58,700 bargain element, taxed as ordinary income on the day you exercise. Combined federal + state + FICA on that bargain typically lands between $15,849 and $26,415 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 Carta tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Carta equity questions
- How is a Carta 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 Carta grant and compares selling the shares now against holding past the one-year mark for long-term capital-gains treatment.
- Does Carta grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Carta 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.
- Does Carta allow early exercise of stock options?
- No. Carta requires options to vest before you can exercise them, so the holding-period clock for long-term capital-gains treatment starts as each tranche vests and you exercise it.
- Are Carta 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 Carta 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 Carta equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.