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Netscape founder pays off MASSIVE tax bill with Facebook shares

Marc Andreessen offloads $54.1m worth of stock

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Marc Andreessen - a Facebook insider who serves on the company's board - held true to his promise on Monday by selling stock worth $54.1m in the recently floated free-content ad network to pay off tax obligations.

To do that, the Netscape founder needed to offload roughly 2.3 million Facebook shares. Andreessen had agreed in September this year not to sell any personal shares in the company, aside from those needed to cover taxes on his holdings.

Facebook's copper-haired chief Mark Zuckerberg also said at the time that he wouldn't sell any personal stock for 12 months.

Andreessen's big tax bill came into effect because of the recent vesting or settlement of restricted stock units in the company. Meanwhile, Washington Post Company chairman Donald Graham - who is another prominent director at Facebook - also racked up a big tax bill for the same reason. Graham sold shares in the website worth around $6.7m to pay the taxman - as noted in this regulatory filing.

Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg offloaded yet more shares - this time selling $4.2m worth of stock. ®

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free-content ad network?

content-free ad network

FTFY

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Re: Tax Bills

You can bet they've already looked at it and found the tax levy to be watertight, especially if it's applicable at the point of liquidation of those assets, and those assests can be proven to have - and gained in - personal value.

They'll pay, but will now be looking at every trick in the book to punt their remaining assests offshore before they need to liquidate them into cash.

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Multi-million dollar tax bill

... A nice problem to have.

Tramp, because in comparison, that's what I am.

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