Incentive Stock Option (ISO)
An incentive stock option is a U.S. statutory employee stock option that can receive special federal tax treatment when grant, exercise, and holding-period requirements are met.
Incentive and performance stock options differ in statutory tax status, vesting conditions, exercise economics, valuation, and dilution effects.
Incentive and performance stock options answer different questions. An incentive stock option is a U.S. statutory tax classification, while a performance stock option is an award-design description for an option subject to performance conditions. A performance option can be nonstatutory, and an ISO does not need a performance target.
Use these pages when employee or executive incentives create ownership-like exposure, compensation expense, dilution, tax-sensitive exercise decisions, or retention conditions. It sits inside Options and Option Grants, so readers can move up when the broader company-finance context matters.
Use the table below to choose the narrower corporate-finance branch before applying a term to a model, board memo, financing analysis, transaction review, or risk assessment. Move into the term page when the evidence source, calculation, agreement, filing, account, or governance right matters.
| Area | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Incentive Stock Option (ISO) | U.S. statutory qualification, employee eligibility, the USD 100,000 limit, AMT exposure, and qualifying or disqualifying dispositions. |
| Performance Stock Option | Options whose vesting, exercisability, or earned quantity depends on business, market, or strategic performance conditions. |
Equity-compensation content is educational and does not provide tax, legal, accounting, employment, or investment advice.
For the U.K. all-employee savings-linked option scheme, see Sharesave (SAYE).
Choose a subsection first. Deeper term pages live inside each subsection, which keeps large topic hubs readable.
An incentive stock option is a U.S. statutory employee stock option that can receive special federal tax treatment when grant, exercise, and holding-period requirements are met.
A performance stock option is an employee or executive option whose vesting, exercisability, or quantity depends on achieving specified performance conditions.