Google (Alphabet) RSU India guide: the 33-22-25-20 vesting schedule and what it means for your tax

You joined Google as an L5 in 2024. Your offer letter shows a 4-year GSU grant. You expected — based on what your engineer friends from 2019-2021 told you — that each year's vesting would be roughly the same, around 25% of the total. Then your first quarterly vest happened, and the share count was much larger than you expected. Then you checked the offer letter again: the vesting wasn't 25-25-25-25 anymore. It was 33-22-25-20.

Google changed its standard new-hire vesting schedule in mid-2023, moving most engineers to a front-loaded structure: 33% in Year 1, 22% in Year 2, 25% in Year 3, 20% in Year 4. The intent was to make Year 1 total comp more competitive against Meta, Amazon, and pre-IPO startups. The tax consequence for Indian residents: Year 1 is now the year that determines your highest tax bracket and your largest single perquisite-tax bill.

This article is the complete Google-specific RSU guide for Indian residents. The structural tax framework lives in the 4-article RSU lifecycle series; this article fills in everything that's specific to Google — the GSU grant types, the new front-loaded schedule, the Morgan Stanley StockPlan Connect quirks for Google's plan, the Alphabet dividend that started in 2024, the refresh-grant compounding that hits in Year 3, and the five filing errors specific to Google offer letters.

Google's grant types — GSU is the only one

Unlike many US tech companies, Google does not have:

• An employee stock purchase plan (ESPP). Google's ESPP was discontinued in 2013. You may see "ESPP" mentioned in old comp comparisons; it doesn't exist anymore.
• Stock options (ISO/NSO) for new hires. Options were retired from the standard new-hire package years ago.
• Performance Stock Units (PSUs) for general engineering levels. PSUs may appear at very senior IC levels (L8+) and executive comp, but most engineers don't see them.

What Google does issue:

Grant type	When	Vesting
Initial GSU grant	At hire	4-year vesting on the standard schedule (33-22-25-20 for post-mid-2023 hires; 25-25-25-25 for earlier hires)
Annual refresh GSU grants	Yearly, after performance review	Same 4-year vesting schedule, starting from the grant date
Special retention grants	Level promotion, retention concern, or comp adjustment	Varies — typically 4-year vest but can have different structures
Mass refresh	Occasionally rolled out at company-wide level	Vest schedule announced at grant time

The grant type that appears in your offer letter is just "GSU" (Google Stock Unit). Internally and on Morgan Stanley statements, you'll see them labeled by grant ID — usually a 6 or 7-character alphanumeric code — and grant date. The grant date matters because it determines which vesting schedule applies to that specific grant.

The transition wrinkle: if you joined before mid-2023 (some grants might be on 25-25-25-25), got promoted to a new level in mid-2024 (refresh grant on 33-22-25-20), and got another refresh in 2025 (on 33-22-25-20), you have two different vesting schedules running simultaneously. Many engineers report this as the most confusing part of Google equity — looking at a vest event and not knowing which grant tranche it came from.

The trick: each GSU grant has a separate "lot" in Morgan Stanley StockPlan Connect. Click any vest event to see which grant it came from, what the grant date was, and what vesting schedule applies. If you're not sure, the offer letter and refresh-grant memo your HR team sent are the source of truth.

The vesting schedule — the new 33-22-25-20

For grants issued from mid-2023 onwards (the default for most current Google employees):

Year	% of total grant vested	Quarterly vest %
Year 1	33%	8.25% per quarter
Year 2	22%	5.5% per quarter
Year 3	25%	6.25% per quarter
Year 4	20%	5% per quarter

The vest happens quarterly (March, June, September, December — typically the 25th of the third month of the quarter). There's no Year-1 cliff in the new schedule — the first vest happens at the end of Q1 from the grant date, not at the end of Year 1 like older grants had.

The refresh-grant overlay. Annual refresh grants stack on top of the initial grant, all on the same 33-22-25-20 schedule. By Year 3, you have three active grants vesting simultaneously: the initial grant in its Year 3 (25%), the Year-1 refresh in its Year 2 (22%), and the Year-2 refresh in its Year 1 (33%).

A 4-year visualization assuming you receive equal-size refresh grants annually:

Quarter	Initial grant share	Year-1 refresh	Year-2 refresh	Year-3 refresh	Total quarterly vest (% of single grant size)
Q1 Y1	8.25%	—	—	—	8.25%
Q1 Y2	5.5%	8.25%	—	—	13.75%
Q1 Y3	6.25%	5.5%	8.25%	—	20%
Q1 Y4	5%	6.25%	5.5%	8.25%	25%

In Year 1 you vest ~33% of one grant. By Year 4, you're vesting ~25% of one grant every single quarter — equivalent to roughly one full grant's worth per year of cumulative vest events. That's the compounding effect of refresh grants.

For pre-mid-2023 hires on 25-25-25-25, the per-quarter math is simpler (6.25% per quarter consistently) — but the compounding effect of refreshes still produces the same Year-3 / Year-4 vest spike.

Morgan Stanley StockPlan Connect — Google-specific walkthrough

Google's GSU plan is administered through Morgan Stanley StockPlan Connect at stockplanconnect.morganstanley.com.

First-time setup: the account is opened automatically when your first vest is about to occur. You'll receive an email from Morgan Stanley with login instructions. Set up two-factor authentication immediately; Morgan Stanley uses SMS-based 2FA by default, which is fine for India numbers but requires an active mobile.

Your account number is shown at the top right of every screen and on every statement. It's a 9-digit number. You'll need this for Schedule FA disclosure.

The four sections (covered in detail in our Morgan Stanley statement reader guide) for Google specifically:

Section	Google-specific notes
Account Summary	Plan Name will show "Alphabet Inc." (the parent company); Fund: "Google LLC"
Activity	Every GSU vest shows as Activity Type = "Vest"; Symbol = GOOGL (Class A) or GOOG (Class C — most new GSUs are GOOG since 2023)
Holdings	Cumulative shares; will show GOOG and GOOGL separately if you have a mix
Tax Forms	1042-S (foreign tax forms) + 1099-DIV (US tax forms, won't apply to most Indian residents); after 2024, 1042-S relevant for new Alphabet dividend

One Google-specific quirk worth knowing: Google issues GSUs in GOOG (Class C, non-voting) for most new grants since 2023, not GOOGL (Class A, voting). The two share classes track each other almost identically (since GOOG has no votes but identical economic rights), but they have separate ticker symbols, separate prices on the day of vest, and separate Schedule FA entries.

Mixed GOOG + GOOGL holdings: if you have older grants in GOOGL and newer grants in GOOG, list them as two separate Schedule FA entries even though they're the same company.

The download path for the annual statement: Login → Statements → Annual Statement → Download PDF. For Indian filing, you typically want the period January 1 to December 31 (calendar year) for Schedule FA — Morgan Stanley defaults to financial year (October-September aligned with their fiscal calendar in some accounts), so explicitly set the period.

Alphabet's new dividend — what changed in 2024

For the first time in its history, Alphabet announced a quarterly cash dividend of $0.20 per share starting Q2 2024. This was confirmed in April 2024 and the dividend continued through 2025 and into 2026, with periodic increases.

For Indian residents holding GOOG or GOOGL, this means:

1. Quarterly dividend events — small but present, taxable as Income from Other Sources in India.
2. US withholding tax at 25% (DTAA rate) with valid W-8BEN on file. Without W-8BEN, 30% statutory rate.
3. Form 44 FTC claim required to credit the US WHT against your Indian tax liability.
4. Form 1042-S issued by Morgan Stanley by March 15 of the following year, showing the gross dividend and US tax withheld.

The amounts are modest. On a holding of 100 shares, a $0.20 quarterly dividend = $20 gross per quarter = $80 per year. At 25% US WHT = $20 withheld annually. At a hypothetical TTBR of Rs 84, that's Rs 1,680 gross / Rs 420 US WHT.

But: even small dividend amounts require Form 44 filing if you want the FTC. Skipping Form 44 because "the amount is small" loses the FTC claim and converts the US WHT into a permanent loss. The Form 44 filing takes 10-15 minutes via the income tax portal — worth doing regardless of dollar size.

ESPP — Google doesn't have one

Worth restating because comp comparisons in 2025-26 often conflate Google's RSU comp with companies that have ESPPs:

Company	RSU + ESPP?
Microsoft	✓ RSU + ESPP (10% discount, no lookback)
Apple	✓ RSU + ESPP (15% discount, 6-month lookback)
NVIDIA	✓ RSU + ESPP (15% discount, 6-month lookback)
Meta	RSU only (no ESPP)
Amazon	RSU only (no ESPP)
Google	RSU only (ESPP discontinued in 2013)

So when filing taxes for a Google-only employment history, you have only the RSU side to worry about. No ESPP discount to track, no separate ESPP grant lots, no ESPP-specific perquisite calculations.

If you joined Google after working at Microsoft or Apple, you may still have ESPP shares from those companies in separate brokerage accounts — those need separate Schedule FA entries.

Four-year worked example: an L5 Indian engineer

This example walks through a typical L5 Indian engineer who joined Google in March 2024 in the Bangalore office. Numbers are illustrative — substitute your own grant size for accuracy.

Year 1 (2024-2025): Initial grant only

Assume initial GSU grant of $240,000 vesting over 4 years on 33-22-25-20:

• Year 1 vests = 33% × $240,000 = $79,200 (in 4 quarterly tranches of $19,800 each, at then-current GOOG price)
• Assume GOOG averages $170 over the year → roughly 116 shares per quarter, ~466 shares total in Year 1
• Convert each quarterly vest to INR at the actual SBI TTBR on the vest date
• Approximate aggregate INR perquisite for Year 1: Rs 66 lakh (at TTBR ~Rs 83)
• Tax at top slab (assume already in 30% bracket from base salary): Rs 66L × ~31.2% ≈ Rs 20.6 lakh

That's the perquisite-tax bill from RSUs alone in Year 1. Add base salary tax to get the total annual tax liability.

Year 2 (2025-2026): Initial grant + Year-1 refresh

Assume Year-1 refresh grant of $80,000 on same 33-22-25-20:

• From initial grant: 22% × $240,000 = $52,800
• From refresh grant: 33% × $80,000 = $26,400
• Combined Year 2 vest: $79,200
• INR perquisite ≈ Rs 66 lakh (similar to Year 1 in absolute terms — refresh compensates for the Year-1 → Year-2 step-down in initial grant)

Year 3 (2026-2027): Initial grant + 2 refresh grants + dividend

Assume Year-2 refresh of $100,000:

• From initial: 25% × $240,000 = $60,000
• From Y1 refresh: 22% × $80,000 = $17,600
• From Y2 refresh: 33% × $100,000 = $33,000
• Combined Year 3 vest: $110,600
• INR perquisite ≈ Rs 93 lakh

This is the Year-3 spike. Note: at this point your total compensation has stepped up significantly compared to Year 1, pushing surcharge slab (10% surcharge applies above Rs 50 lakh; 15% above Rs 1 crore total income). Effective tax rate on the perquisite is now ~31.2% + surcharge addition.

By Year 3 you also have meaningful holdings — say 1,200 GOOG shares — earning ~$960 in annual dividends. US WHT = $240 = Rs 20,000. India tax on gross Rs 80,640 = Rs 24,000. Form 44 FTC recovers Rs 20,000 of that. Net Indian tax on dividends ≈ Rs 4,000. Small numbers but require the Form 44 paperwork.

Year 4 (2027-2028): Three refresh grants + initial grant tail + dividend

Assume Year-3 refresh of $120,000:

• From initial: 20% × $240,000 = $48,000
• From Y1 refresh: 25% × $80,000 = $20,000
• From Y2 refresh: 22% × $100,000 = $22,000
• From Y3 refresh: 33% × $120,000 = $39,600
• Combined Year 4 vest: $129,600
• INR perquisite ≈ Rs 109 lakh

By Year 4, you're vesting more total stock than Year 1 because three layered refresh grants compound. This is the structural reason engineers at Google who stay 4+ years often find their RSU income exceeds their base salary by Year 4 — the comp curve catches up via stacked refreshes.

Five common scenarios for Google employees

1. Joined as Lambda (L3/L4) vs Staff (L6/L7). Higher levels get larger grants and the per-quarter perquisite numbers compound faster. The framework is the same; the absolute numbers scale. L6 typical initial grant in 2024-25 was $400-600K; L7 was $800K-1.5M+. The tax planning principle: if your perquisite for the year pushes you above Rs 1 crore total income, the 15% surcharge kicks in (and at Rs 2 crore, 25%, and at Rs 5 crore, 37%). This can materially change effective tax rates.

2. Promotion mid-year with new vesting schedule. If you joined pre-mid-2023 on 25-25-25-25 and got promoted post-mid-2023 receiving a fresh grant on 33-22-25-20, you have two schedules running. Each grant must be tracked separately in your filing spreadsheet because each has a different per-quarter percentage and may have a different vest day.

3. Equity acceleration on departure. Google's standard policy: unvested GSUs are forfeited on departure (you don't get the unvested portion). Exceptions apply for retirement (typically requires age 55+ and 5 years of service), death, or disability. No vest acceleration for standard exits — what's unvested is gone. Plan your departure timing carefully if you have a large grant tranche about to vest.

4. Returning to India mid-vesting. Cross-reference the bilateral residency article. If you transferred from Mountain View to Bangalore mid-grant, the India-side perquisite is attributed proportionally to days of service in India during the vesting period. Get a cross-border CA involved; this is the single highest-risk area for filing errors.

5. Cashing out at IPO / acquisition. Not applicable to Alphabet (long public), but worth noting that some Google subsidiaries (Waymo, Verily, X labs) issue separate equity. If you hold equity in a Google subsidiary that goes through an IPO or acquisition, the tax treatment is separate from GSU perquisite — capital gains rules may apply differently.

Form 16 + AIS reconciliation — what to expect from Google India

Google's India entity (Google LLC India, Google India Private Limited, etc.) handles payroll TDS on the perquisite portion of your GSUs for India-resident employees. Specifically:

What	Where it appears
Gross GSU vest value (INR per SBI TTBR on vest date)	Form 16 Part B, Section B(1)(b): "Value of perquisites under Section 17(2)"
TDS deducted on that perquisite	Form 16 Part A, deducted in the month following the vest
Total perquisite for the year	Form 12BA, attached to Form 16

Common mismatch: if Google's India entity used a different SBI TTBR than you'd expect (e.g., they sometimes use a slightly different reference rate or a month-average), the Form 16 perquisite figure may differ marginally from your calculation. Use Form 16 as the source of truth for Schedule S filing — the Income Tax Department reconciles against Form 16, not your Morgan Stanley statement.

AIS quirks: GSU vest events should appear in your Annual Information Statement under "Perquisite from employer" if Google's India payroll captured them. They should NOT appear separately as US-source income. If you see duplicate entries (vest from Morgan Stanley + vest from Google India payroll), that's a reconciliation error — submit feedback via the AIS portal.

Form 26AS should show the TDS amount Google deducted. Cross-verify against Form 16 — they should match within 1-2 paise.

Schedule FA disclosure for Alphabet

For each calendar year when you held GOOG or GOOGL shares (even if you sold during the year), file Schedule FA Section A3:

Field	Value for Alphabet
Country	2 (United States of America)
Name of Entity	Alphabet Inc. (the parent — not "Google LLC")
Address of Entity	1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
Nature of Entity	Foreign Listed Company
Date of Acquisition	Earliest vest date of currently-held shares
Initial Value (INR)	Cost basis at acquisition (vest-date TTBR × shares × price)
Peak Value (INR)	Highest market value during the calendar year × TTBR
Closing Value (INR)	Dec 31 value × Dec 31 TTBR
Total dividends received (INR)	Gross dividend × dividend-date TTBR (each quarter, summed)
Total sale proceeds (INR)	Sale value × sale-date TTBR (if you sold)
Custodian	Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC
Custodian Address	1585 Broadway, New York, NY 10036, USA
Account Number	Your 9-digit MS StockPlan Connect account number

Two entries if you hold both classes. If you have a mix of GOOG and GOOGL shares, file as two separate Schedule FA entries — same entity (Alphabet Inc.) but different security descriptions.

Common errors specific to Google filings

1. Confusing old 25-25-25-25 vesting with new 33-22-25-20. Filers often calculate Year-1 perquisite based on 25% when their grant is actually 33%. Pull the grant memo from your HR system to confirm which schedule applies.

2. Treating GOOG and GOOGL as the same. They have separate tickers, separate market prices on any given date, and separate Schedule FA entries. The economics are nearly identical but the filing is technically separate.

3. Filing dividend FTC on a quarterly basis instead of annually. Form 44 is filed once per year covering all dividend receipts in the assessment year. Don't file quarterly Form 44s.

4. Missing the Year-1 perquisite-tax shock. Engineers joining at L5+ on the 33-22-25-20 schedule have a Year-1 perquisite that easily exceeds Rs 50 lakh, triggering surcharge bands. Plan advance tax payments accordingly — Section 234B/C interest can be material.

5. Not tracking which grant a vest came from. When you have multiple active grants (initial + 2 refresh), each vest event is from a specific grant. For cost-basis tracking when you eventually sell, you need to know which grant tranche each share came from. Morgan Stanley StockPlan Connect tracks this; your CA needs it.

6. Assuming no ESPP means no ESPP-related disclosure. Correct for Google — no ESPP means no ESPP perquisite. But if you previously worked at Microsoft/Apple/NVIDIA before Google, you may still hold ESPP shares from that employer in a separate broker account, with separate Schedule FA disclosure required.

RSU concentration risk — and what to do about it

By Year 3 at Google, the typical L5+ engineer holds 50-70% of their liquid net worth in Alphabet stock. This is the structural feature of RSU compensation: you receive the shares, you pay perquisite tax in INR at the vest date, and you're then long the same single name with all your post-tax savings.

The standard Morgan Stanley StockPlan Connect account doesn't let you diversify within the same account — you can hold the shares, sell and convert to USD cash, or remit the proceeds. The sell-and-remit-to-India path triggers a separate set of LRS + FEMA considerations and converts the asset out of the foreign-equity bucket.

Rovia is built specifically to solve this for Indian residents. Transfer your vested Alphabet shares from Morgan Stanley directly to Rovia (in-kind transfer, no taxable event), then redeploy into diversified US ETFs or other single stocks while keeping the assets in the foreign-equity bucket and the original LRS treatment intact. The transfer itself is not a sale event, so no STCG/LTCG is triggered.

Next steps

To file your Google RSU income for AY 2026-27 or AY 2027-28:

1. How RSU double-taxation actually works — the 3-event framework
2. Reading your Morgan Stanley StockPlan Connect statement — field-by-field translation
3. From vest to ITR-2: the complete 12-step workflow — execution
4. RSU vesting while in US vs India — if you returned from a Mountain View / Sunnyvale transfer
5. Schedule FA disclosure guide — Schedule FA deep dive
6. Schedule FA wizard — upload your Morgan Stanley PDF, get INR-converted Schedule FA + capital gains schedule + Form 44 evidence in CSV. Free for V1.

For other employer-specific RSU guides:

• Microsoft RSU India guide (in progress) — 20% over 5 years, ESPP at 10%, the densest quarterly vest calendar in tech
• Meta RSU India guide (in progress) — Schwab Equity Awards, monthly disbursement, PSU performance multipliers at senior levels
• Amazon RSU India guide (in progress) — 5-15-40-40 back-weighted; the Year-3 spike
• Apple RSU India guide (in progress) — semi-annual vests, ESPP at 15% with 6-month lookback
• NVIDIA RSU India guide (in progress) — Schwab, quarterly vest, PSU appreciation patterns

This article reflects Google's 2024-2026 grant practices and the post-Budget 2024 Indian tax framework. The 33-22-25-20 vesting schedule applies to new hires from mid-2023 onwards; older grants on 25-25-25-25 follow the same framework with different per-quarter percentages. We refresh this guide annually after each Budget; the framework holds across rate changes.