Short answer: less of it than the offer letter suggests.
If a recruiter quotes you a total comp number that adds your base salary to the face value of an RSU grant, that RSU portion is a projection, not a guarantee.
Four things stand between the number on the offer letter and the money you actually end up with: the stock price can move, tax takes a real bite, you might not stay long enough to collect every tranche, and the rupee-dollar rate on the day your shares vest is not the rate anyone assumed when the offer was written.
None of this means RSU-heavy offers are bad. It means the quoted number and the realized number are two different things, and comparing offers on the quoted number alone can mislead you, especially when you're choosing between a cash-heavy offer and an RSU-heavy one.
Why the quoted number is a face-value number, not a promise
An RSU grant is a promise of a fixed number of shares delivered over a vesting schedule, not a fixed rupee or dollar amount. When a recruiter says 'your total comp is X,' they've multiplied that share count by the stock price on the day they wrote the offer (or the grant date) and added it to your salary.
That calculation is accurate on the day it's made. It says nothing about what the shares will be worth when they actually vest, what tax will take out of that value, whether you'll still be employed when the later tranches vest, or what the rupee will buy at that point.
If you want the mechanics of how a grant becomes actual shares in your hands, seewhat an RSU is and how it works andhow a vesting schedule is decoded. What follows here is the discount you should mentally apply to the quoted number before you compare it to a cash-heavy alternative.
Stock-price risk
The RSU portion of your offer is priced in shares, not rupees. Between the day you sign and the day each tranche vests, the price of those shares can be higher or lower than it was on offer day. Because the number of shares is fixed but the price is not, the rupee value of your later tranches is genuinely unknown at the time you accept the offer.
This is a risk in both directions. It is not correct to assume the stock will only go up, and it is equally wrong to model your decision around it only going down.
This is also why a large RSU grant concentrated in one company's stock is a bigger swing factor in your net worth than the same rupee amount spread across a diversified portfolio. Seewhy your RSU is not your net worth for more on that.
The tax haircut
This is the one discount factor you can actually pin down with real numbers, because Indian tax law taxes RSUs in a specific, predictable way.
When your RSUs vest, the fair market value (FMV) of the shares on the vesting date is treated as a perquisite and taxed as salary income, at your applicable income tax slab rate, not as a lower capital gains rate. Your employer withholds tax underSection 192 of the Income-tax Act at the time of vesting, usually by selling some of the vesting shares to cover it (called 'sell-to-cover'), rather than asking you to pay it separately.
On top of the slab rate, surcharge (if your income crosses the relevant thresholds) and Health and Education Cess also apply, so the real haircut is higher than the slab rate alone.
Example. Suppose you're already earning enough that a vesting RSU tranche falls entirely within the top 30% slab. One tranche vests: 100 shares at an FMV of $500 each, converted at an SBI TT Buying Rate of ₹85.60, giving a face value of ₹42,80,000 for that lot.
| | | | :-: | :-: | | \\Item\\ | \\Amount\\ | | RSU face value at vesting (100 shares × $500 FMV × ₹85.60) | ₹42,80,000 | | Income tax at the 30% slab | ₹12,84,000 | | Surcharge at 10% | ₹1,28,400 | | Health and Education Cess at 4% (on tax + surcharge) | ₹56,496 | | \\Total tax withheld\\ | \\₹14,68,896\\ |
The result: roughly 34.3% of that tranche's face value goes to tax before you ever see it, leaving about ₹28,11,104 net, and that's before the withholding is trued up or reconciled against your actual total income when you file your return.
One more thing worth knowing: the cost of acquisition for these shares, for the capital gains tax you'll owe later when you sell, is fixed at this same vesting-date FMV. So the tax you pay at vesting isn't 'extra,' it sets your basis for everything that follows.
Vesting-completion risk
A quoted total comp figure typically includes the full face value of a multi-year RSU grant as if it's already yours. It isn't, until each tranche actually vests.
In most cases, if you leave your employer before a tranche of RSUs vests, the unvested portion is forfeited. Because the shares never became yours, you don't owe tax on the forfeited portion either, but you also don't get its value. That's the part of the 'total comp' number that only becomes real if you stay for the full vesting period.
The flip side: once a tranche has vested, it's yours regardless of what happens afterward. If you leave your employer after that tranche vests, the tax treatment of those already-vested shares is unaffected by your departure.
This is the discount factor most within your control. If you're evaluating an offer with a large back-loaded RSU grant, ask yourself honestly how likely you are to stay long enough to collect the later tranches, rather than assuming you will.
Currency risk
Your RSUs are denominated in a foreign currency (typically USD), but you live and spend in rupees. Every conversion in this process, the taxable perquisite value at vesting, the cost of acquisition, the eventual sale proceeds, uses a specific rate: the SBI TT Buying Rate (TTBR), not whatever rate you see on Google or a forex site. For the RSU vesting perquisite specifically, the applicable TTBR is generally the rate on the vesting date itself, since RSU vesting almost always triggers immediate TDS withholding via sell-to-cover.
That mechanic determines how the tax gets calculated. It doesn't tell you what the rate will actually be on that future date, and that's the risk: the rupee value of a dollar-denominated grant depends on an exchange rate that hasn't happened yet when you accept the offer.
For more on how currency moves specifically affect RSU value, seehow rupee weakness changes the way your RSUs look.
A rule of thumb for comparing offers with different salary/RSU mixes
When two offers split compensation differently between guaranteed cash and RSUs, don't compare the headline totals directly. Instead:
1. Separate the certain from the conditional. Base salary and any cash bonus are close to guaranteed. The RSU grant's quoted value is not; it's a projection built on today's share price for shares that vest over the next several years. 2. Apply your own tax haircut, not a generic one. Work out what slab your RSU income will actually fall into using the method inhow to calculate RSU taxes, rather than assuming a flat percentage. A person well under the top slab keeps meaningfully more of each tranche than the top-bracket example above. 3. Discount later tranches for the chance you won't be there to collect them. A grant that's 25% up front and 75% back-loaded over three more years carries more vesting-completion risk than one that's evenly split, even if both quote the same total. 4. Treat currency movement as a wildcard, not a baseline. Don't assume rupee depreciation will pad your returns; if it does, treat it as a bonus, not a reason to accept a lower cash offer. 5. Weight certainty according to your own situation. If you have low savings, high near-term expenses, or are early in your career, a larger guaranteed cash component is worth more to you than the same headline number in RSUs. If you have a longer runway and can absorb the stock-price and vesting risk, a larger RSU component may be worth the trade.
The goal isn't to produce a single 'real' number to three decimal places. It's to stop comparing two offers on the number printed on the offer letter, and start comparing them on what each is actually likely to put in your hands.
