A natureza jurídica dos planos de stock options

Abstract

This dissertation’s subject is stock options, most specifically its legal nature. The study was engaged during the Post-Graduate studies in Law at the Catholic Pontifical University of Rio Grande do Sul, with focus in the field “Constitutional Fundamentals of Public and Private Law”, being the research line “Efficacy and Effectiveness of the Constitution and Fundamental Rights in Public and Private Law”, and the mentor Professor Gilberto Stürmer. The study analyses, through labor law and supported by corporate, tax and social security law, if stock options, also called option of buying stocks, have a salary or mercantile legal nature. The study is limited to the buying option of stocks granted by the companies to its workers, specially those that keep a formal employment relationship, correspondent to subordinated, personal, non-eventual and onerous labor. Its legal nature is verified based in the lessons of the doctrine and labor and federal courts, as well as the tax agencies, emphasizing the analysis of the incidence or not of social contributions over the amounts received by employees in reason of the gains achieved through a stock options plan demonstrating the hypothesis of incidence (legal nature of salary) and non-incidence (mercantile legal nature) of said contributions.