Nonqualified Stock Options and the Tax Impact of NSOs

Nonqualified stock options face less favorable tax treatment than incentive stock options — here's how they differ.

Updated Sep 12, 2023 · 3 min read Written by Tiffany Lam-Balfour Lead Writer

Tiffany Lam-Balfour
Lead Writer | Merrill Lynch, UBS AG, UBS Global Asset Management, Credit Suisse

Tiffany Lam-Balfour is a former investing writer and spokesperson at NerdWallet. Previously, she was a senior financial advisor and sales manager at Merrill Lynch. Her work has been featured in MSN, MarketWatch, Entrepreneur, Nasdaq and Yahoo Finance. Tiffany earned a finance and management degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Assigning Editor

Chris Davis
Assigning Editor | Cryptocurrency, brokerage accounts, stock market

Chris Davis is an assigning editor on the investing team. As a writer, he covered the stock market, investing strategies and investment accounts, and as a spokesperson, he appeared on NBC Bay Area and was quoted in Forbes, Apartment Therapy, Martha Stewart and Lifewire, among others. His work has appeared in The Associated Press, The Washington Post, MSN, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Newsday and TheStreet. Previously, he was the content manager for the luxury property management service InvitedHome and the section editor for the legal and finance desk of international marketing agency Brafton. He spent nearly three years living abroad, first as a senior writer for the marketing agency Castleford in Auckland, NZ, and then as an English teacher in Spain. He is based in Longmont, Colorado.