I could have saved a bit of money with better tax planning, but not as much as one might think.
The money I was able to donate came from appreciated crypto, and was mostly unrelated to my employment at Lightcone (and also as an appreciated asset was therefore particularly tax-advantageous to donate).
I have generally taken relatively low salaries for most of my time working at Lightcone. My rough guess is that my average salary has been around $70k/yr[1]. Lightcone only started paying more competetive salaries in 2022 when we expanded beyond some of our initial founding staff, and I felt like it didn’t really make cultural or institutional sense to have extremely low salaries. The only year in which I got paid closer to any competetive Bay Area salary was 2023, and in that year I also got to deduct most of that since I donated in the same year.
(My salary has always been among the lowest in the organization, mostly as a costly signal to employees and donors that I am serious about doing this for impact reasons)
I don’t have convenient tax records for years before 2019, but my income post-federal-tax (but before state tax) for the last 6 years was $59,800 (2019), $71,473 (2020), $83,995 (2021), $36,949 (2022), $125,175 (2023), ~$70,000 (2024).
(My salary has always been among the lowest in the organization, mostly as a costly signal to employees and donors that I am serious about doing this for impact reasons)
I could have saved a bit of money with better tax planning, but not as much as one might think.
The money I was able to donate came from appreciated crypto, and was mostly unrelated to my employment at Lightcone (and also as an appreciated asset was therefore particularly tax-advantageous to donate).
I have generally taken relatively low salaries for most of my time working at Lightcone. My rough guess is that my average salary has been around $70k/yr[1]. Lightcone only started paying more competetive salaries in 2022 when we expanded beyond some of our initial founding staff, and I felt like it didn’t really make cultural or institutional sense to have extremely low salaries. The only year in which I got paid closer to any competetive Bay Area salary was 2023, and in that year I also got to deduct most of that since I donated in the same year.
(My salary has always been among the lowest in the organization, mostly as a costly signal to employees and donors that I am serious about doing this for impact reasons)
I don’t have convenient tax records for years before 2019, but my income post-federal-tax (but before state tax) for the last 6 years was $59,800 (2019), $71,473 (2020), $83,995 (2021), $36,949 (2022), $125,175 (2023), ~$70,000 (2024).
Very helpful reply, thank you!
I appreciate that!