How to understand and write down accrued tax liability?

General
1

I am in a position where I have a vested shares at my previous employers. I currently track it as something like this -

2024-04-01  Vested Shares of SYM
    Assets:NonLiquid:StockOptions:SYM    10000 SYM
    Equity:opening/closing balance

This is the something that I have access to once in every quarter. But in reality now it works it that company firsts asks to submit the income tax in the my country's currency to them that they transfer to government on my behalf. So I also want to track this tax liability that is due in default currency based on when I decide to clear those assets. Also note that the strike price for me is zero for those shares.

Having my report workflow somewhat automated I download prices and render my -V reports to see my net worth, etc. I partially update the liability as 30% SYM (income tax rate) of the Total StockOptions. While that seems okay for my converted reports, I am not fully sure this is the right way as the liability is actually in different currency than the the commodity itself that I am going to be paid.

So my question is this, what seems more plausible?

2024-04-01  Future liability for procuring SYM Vested shares
    Liabilities:Tax:StockOptions    3000 SYM
    Equity:opening/closing balance

OR do I manually update the liability as price changes and track it like this:

2024-04-01  Future liability for procuring SYM Vested shares at $10 per share
    Liabilities:Tax:StockOptions    $3000
    Equity:opening/closing balance

2024-05-01  Future liability for procuring SYM Vested shares at $12 per share
    Liabilities:Tax:StockOptions    $3600
    Equity:opening/closing balance

Keeping liabilities in SYM makes the reports automated keeping current pricing in place but it has the tradeoff of being not correct, as there is some transaction fee of converting SYM to $ in terms of some capital gain tax or transaction fee etc.

2

I assume it depends on the tax law of your country. What is the reason to tax: be paid with stockoptions, sell the stockoptions previously received or both actions? I would only increase the Liabilities:Tax:StockOptions account when the reason to tax happens and it should be in Dollars beacuse at that moment you should be able to estimate the Dollars you will have to pay in taxes.

3

I can't pay with the stock options, I can pay by selling the stock options previously exercised, or just local currency. I do understand that increasing the liabilities should only be done when the reason to tax but I think it would be injustice to see only 70% of what I thought I had in my significant asset account.

But I haven't found a solution for this yet, I started tracking that liability:deferred in SYM itself for now, but only virtually in unbalanced parenthesis for now till I am satisfied with a way

4

ok... what about the unrealized gain and losses account? What Are Unrealized Gains and Losses? Perhaps, this is the account right to record this liability. I mention this account in this post How to keep track of both gross and net earnings from investments with regressive taxation? - #6 by zako (which addreses one similar matter).