I'll just leave this here. The link to the article is at the end. This is from the dotcom bubble when lots of people got hammered by accounting rules.
Chou used incentive stock options to buy about 100,000 Cisco shares last year, paying 5 to 10 cents for each share. At the time, Cisco stock was trading between $60 and $70 a share. The difference between the price he paid and what the shares were worth -- about $6.9 million -- is taxable to him as profit, even though he never sold the shares.
Under the AMT, the first $175,000 of Chou's taxable income is taxed at a federal 26% rate, and any amount over that is taxed at 28%. Add in state taxes, and the bill is $2.5 million.
Chou could sell his shares now, but it wouldn't solve his problem. Cisco closed Thursday at $17.98 a share, which means that his stake is worth about $1.8 million. To pay his state and federal tax bill, he needs an additional $700,000.