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Have You Ever W2'ed $1,000,000 in a single year?


Vegas64

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Looking at some taxes stuff. I am at a point where I'll be the most experienced and in the most senior role in my career and life as an oldie and I had a great year financially. However, I'm still so far from a 7 figure W2.

I've had many friends and colleagues climb the ladder and I've heard of folks getting to that point. How do you do it? Has anyone here done it and can proffer some advice? Is it luck and a one-off (stock options/RSU's vest) or is it repeatable (C-Suite role? Managing Partner with huge bonuses?). 

Or anyone hit a grandslam with crypto / day trading?

Just curious more than anything I guess and you guys and gals are the best and brightest!

(My suspicion, btw, is that it is exponentially easier to make a million bucks a year if you own your own small-to-medium business and are not a corporate employee)

Edited by Vegas64
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The small to medium business owner would most likely not pay himself 1m so that it hit the W2 as regular wages. It would be distributed as a dividend of some type, assuming it wasn’t an outright sale. But still I suppose someone somewhere has paid themselves 1m in wages.

as far as corporate folks who get up to that level, I’ve known a few fairly well and I wouldn’t want their jobs for double the pay. But you get to see your family at extremely nice vacations once or twice per year. So there’s that.

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https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/18inallw2.xls


According to IRS in 2018(most recent year on linked data) only 140k out of 140 million (round numbers) W2 earners made 1 million plus.  So 1/10th of 1% of earners.  I’m sure employment type data is available somewhere.  I’d guess athletes, actors, musicians and a handful of large corporations executives.

Thats not to say there aren’t many more who make millions of dollars in compensation, but those statistics get really messy due to pass through entities income being taxed at the individual ownership tax return.  So a small business owner can easily have significant taxable income on their return that they haven’t received in cash payment.

Edited by Incredulity
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3 hours ago, Incredulity said:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/18inallw2.xls


According to IRS in 2018(most recent year on linked data) only 140k out of 140 million (round numbers) W2 earners made 1 million plus.  So 1/10th of 1% of earners.  I’m sure employment type data is available somewhere.  I’d guess athletes, actors, musicians and a handful of large corporations executives.

Thats not to say there aren’t many more who make millions of dollars in compensation, but those statistics get really messy due to pass through entities income being taxed at the individual ownership tax return.  So a small business owner can easily have significant taxable income on their return that they haven’t received in cash payment.

How did you get 140k? I think table 1.H is what we should be looking at. Looks to me like 561k (last 5 rows).

There are a ton of people who work in Tech who are making 1M on their RSUs, anyone at one of the big places (Google, Meta, Apple etc.) at the director level or higher is making close to if not over that 1M mark with RSUs. I bet 30% of those 561k are in the Bay Area. 

 

image.thumb.png.7115b883197aa1093160bcab4015e609.pngDf

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1 hour ago, hornbri said:

How did you get 140k? I think table 1.H is what we should be looking at. Looks to me like 561k (last 5 rows).

There are a ton of people who work in Tech who are making 1M on their RSUs, anyone at one of the big places (Google, Meta, Apple etc.) at the director level or higher is making close to if not over that 1M mark with RSUs. I bet 30% of those 561k are in the Bay Area. 

 

image.thumb.png.7115b883197aa1093160bcab4015e609.pngDf

I was looking at Table 1.B.  Taxpayers with Wage Income, by Size of Wage Income and Gender.....

Column B 21-25 = 144,093

 

The title of the thread is W-2 income, which is not Adjusted Gross Income.  I assume "wage income" in Table 1.B. is W2 income.  Adjusted Gross Income includes pass through entity income(S-corps, LLCs) as I described in my post.

 

Your point about RSU stands and that would appear on a W2 when they vest.  whether RSU is included in Table 1.B. isn't clear to me.

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1 minute ago, Incredulity said:

I was looking at Table 1.B.  Taxpayers with Wage Income, by Size of Wage Income and Gender.....

Column B 21-25 = 144,093

 

The title of the thread is W-2 income, which is not Adjusted Gross Income.  I assume "wage income" in Table 1.B. is W2 income.  Adjusted Gross Income includes pass through entity income(S-corps, LLCs) as I described in my post.

 

Your point about RSU stands and that would appear on a W2 when they vest.  whether RSU is included in Table 1.B. isn't clear to me.

RSUs are counted on your W2. Sorry you've never had any worth knowing this. 

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15 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

I was looking at Table 1.B.  Taxpayers with Wage Income, by Size of Wage Income and Gender.....

Column B 21-25 = 144,093

 

The title of the thread is W-2 income, which is not Adjusted Gross Income.  I assume "wage income" in Table 1.B. is W2 income.  Adjusted Gross Income includes pass through entity income(S-corps, LLCs) as I described in my post.

 

Your point about RSU stands and that would appear on a W2 when they vest.  whether RSU is included in Table 1.B. isn't clear to me.

I see what you are saying about AGI vs Wage income.

I think RSUs would have to be on table 1.B based on it saying in includes all w-2 compensation. 

It also says they are estimates based on samples so who knows how exactly they made the data. 

Edited by hornbri
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1 hour ago, immamac said:

I've gotten halfway there once. 

I got about 65% of the way there this year and it's taken time off my life clock in the form of lack of sleep and man hours worked and even then I needed a great deal of good luck.

That's why I was asking-- knowing the horrors endured, how does one ever even obtain a consistent (or one-off) 7 figure w2 as a corporate, white collar worker. I think the answer based on this thread is some combination of a) insane luck b) insane personal sacrifice and/or c) find a job with a lot of upside on RSU's (see first reason a.)

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1 hour ago, Vegas64 said:

I got about 65% of the way there this year and it's taken time off my life clock in the form of lack of sleep and man hours worked and even then I needed a great deal of good luck.

That's why I was asking-- knowing the horrors endured, how does one ever even obtain a consistent (or one-off) 7 figure w2 as a corporate, white collar worker. I think the answer based on this thread is some combination of a) insane luck b) insane personal sacrifice and/or c) find a job with a lot of upside on RSU's (see first reason a.)

good news is there are still 11 months left in this year.   if you are 65% of the way there and it is just January I like your odds  

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1 hour ago, Parliament said:

FBS head or position coach gets you there.

Talk about lottery ticket winner odds when looking at how many positions versus population. More likely to get into Stanford as a D student or get a Chick Fila franchise as an unhoused person than get the $1mm salary coach of one of the 32 teams in the NFL (or 50+ of big monied D1 schools).

Edited by Vegas64
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A person I worked with, actually I was part of the team that did the interview, went on to become CFO and then CEO of a publicly traded company. CEO for just over 5 years, then the business slumped and they were fired, all deferred comp, options and such fully vested. Proxy that year showed 3+mil, no idea when it was paid, and we don't compare W-2s. And then of course, they landed on some public BOD , which is a great retirement gig, I think they would be mid to late 60s todaym

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I don't know of anyone that earns a $1 mil W2 income.  And why the hell would you want to and pay an enormous amount of tax.  If you are making 7 figures, you can afford to buy a business or are likely smart enough to start and run one where you can "make" way less, work less, and keep the same amount post tax dollars and have actual equity in a business that you can sell.    '

Work smarter, not harder to get to that number.

Edited by victory88
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28 minutes ago, victory88 said:

I don't know of anyone that earns a $1 mil W2 income.  And why the hell would you want to and pay an enormous amount of tax.  If you are making 7 figures, you can afford to buy a business or are likely smart enough to start and run one where you can "make" way less, work less, and keep the same amount post tax dollars and have actual equity in a business that you can sell.    '

Work smarter, not harder to get to that number.

That's a great answer and thought. Taxes alone must be about $300k based on what I experienced (30.1%). That's a lot of taxes and does seem like doing it the hard way.

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56 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

Right. Which I think the same person (or similiar) mentioned "good luck ever seeing your family except on two luxury vacations a year". 

No, not really. Obviously many intense places and positions, but a lot of folks with relatively chill jobs benefited from rapid RSU appreciation and/or liquidity events during the tech boom. Not so much nowadays, except for the janitors at Nvidia. 

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18 hours ago, Vegas64 said:

That's a great answer and thought. Taxes alone must be about $300k based on what I experienced (30.1%). That's a lot of taxes and does seem like doing it the hard way.

Yes, making an over 1M a year is so easy why would you do it the hard way….lol

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On 1/22/2025 at 8:49 AM, immamac said:

I've gotten halfway there once. 

When I was working overseas I got close to $600K for my "benefits in kind" value.  What hit my bank account was nothing close to the BIK value but that was what was used for the starting point on taxable income.

On 1/22/2025 at 8:58 AM, TwiceHorn said:

An old buddy of mine does or did patent contingency work for a while.  He mentioned getting a check for $1M one time.  Not to the firm, to him personally.

 

I always thought it was frowned upon to pay a bribe via check.

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I know a guy in the Seattle area who recently sold his share of a medium size business to his two partners. 
They are paying him off at $6,000,000 annually for eight years. 
So he’s lucky that it’s only being taxed for capital gains and not W2 income.

Personally, my w2 Social Security annuity is seven figures if you count the cents ($28,000.00).

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3 hours ago, hornbri said:

Yes, making an over 1M a year is so easy why would you do it the hard way….lol

Which you raise an interesting point. You always hear the old saw, "the first million is the hardest..." I guess if you can do it once, it makes it easier to repeat. So while technically make the first $1m/year is hard no matter what, at some point you can start betting on the 6, 7, and 8's instead of trying to roll box cars or snake eyes? That's how I'm viewing it at least.

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11 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

Which you raise an interesting point. You always hear the old saw, "the first million is the hardest..." I guess if you can do it once, it makes it easier to repeat. So while technically make the first $1m/year is hard no matter what, at some point you can start betting on the 6, 7, and 8's instead of trying to roll box cars or snake eyes? That's how I'm viewing it at least.

And to bring it full circle, thats why you see so many tech workers retire early, they are worked to death, never see family, but make a shitload of money. Then they look around one day and say fuck this shit.

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23 hours ago, victory88 said:

I don't know of anyone that earns a $1 mil W2 income.  And why the hell would you want to and pay an enormous amount of tax.  If you are making 7 figures, you can afford to buy a business or are likely smart enough to start and run one where you can "make" way less, work less, and keep the same amount post tax dollars and have actual equity in a business that you can sell.    '

Work smarter, not harder to get to that number.

I have several friends in O&G that make close to 7 fig W-2s. One is the buddy that we hunt with on our new lease. He uses most of his W-2 money in an LLC that he created. He had a guy, on site that was getting a divorce, he had bought all of the equipment to start a land clearing business, but his wife asked for a divorce right after he had made the purchase. It was about $250k worth of equipment, he sold it to our buddy for $100k since he needed the money immediately for divorce funds. That kinda started my buddy down the road of having multiple small businesses that aren't shown to be real profitable, but you get the depreciation, and you only pay long term capital gains when you sell the business at a profit.

I will say, by far, the biggest benefit is writing off $15-20k/month of partying, vacation travel, ski boats, "company" vehicles, and the like off as company or entertainment expenses. He just gets to write shit off that he was going to do anyway.

CHIEF

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44 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

I will say, by far, the biggest benefit is writing off $15-20k/month of partying, vacation travel, ski boats, "company" vehicles, and the like off as company or entertainment expenses. He just gets to write shit off that he was going to do anyway

Every tax return is an opening bid.  IRS can go hot & mean on all that real quick 

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I've known some sales guys that cleared that much.  If we are talking straight salary, hell, when I at SWA, the oldest original pilot still flying had a base of over 500K.  The CEO Gary. also had a commensurate base around 500K, but was bolstered by a few million in stocks YoY (which is where the real money is). 

Think about the level of revenue you have to generate to justify a base that large?  Again, outside of sales, you're talking the top of the C-suite 

15 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

Every tax return is an opening bid.  IRS can go hot & mean on all that real quick 

me-avoiding-my-taxes-ojkjx05ft7juizqt.gi

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