One-dollar salary

Dollar-a-year men

In the early-to-mid-20th century, "dollar-a-year men" were business and government executives who helped the government mobilize and manage American industry during periods of war, notably World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. U.S. law generally forbids the government from accepting the services of unpaid volunteers, but specific authorities exist within some agencies. Those employed by the government had to be paid a nominal salary, and the salary establishes their legal relationship as employees of the government. During World War I, about 1,000 such people were employed by the United States. While they received only a dollar in salary from the government, most executives had their salaries paid by the companies.

The first known such employee was Gifford Pinchot, working for Theodore Roosevelt. After Pinchot, the United States Department of Agriculture employed several dollar-a-year men. On June 19, 1933, Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor appointed a five-member Labor Advisory Board, of whom two members came from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union, of whom one, Sidney Hillman, was a dollar-a-year man. Progressive lawyer Max Lowenthal was a dollar-a-year man as legal counsel on various congressional committees, befriended U.S. Senator Harry S. Truman, and wound up as a dollar-a-year man in Truman's cabinet.

World War I

Bernard Baruch was the first businessman employed for a one-dollar salary. During World War I, the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense was staffed largely by dollar-a-year men, including Bernard Baruch, Robert S. Brookings, and Herbert Bayard Swope.

Interwar

Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller, wealthy in his own right, served in several government positions on such terms.

New Deal and World War II

Kentucky's Ashland Oil and Refining Company founder and CEO, Paul G. Blazer (1890–1966), served twice as a government salaried dollar-a-year man: from 1933 to 1935 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration on the Code of Fair Competition for the Petroleum Industry as Chairman of the Blazer Committee and a second time during World War II as Chairman of District II Refining for Roosevelt's Petroleum Administration of War. Herman Wouk worked in Washington, D.C., as a dollar-a-year man writing radio scripts for the U.S. Treasury's Defense Bond Campaign beginning in June 1941. During World War II, socialite Doris Duke worked in a canteen for U.S. sailors in Egypt at such a salary.

In Canada during World War II, C. D. Howe, Canada's "Minister of Everything", created a rearmament program using "dollar-a-year men". An example was John Wilson McConnell, the owner and publisher of the Montreal Star, who was appointed Director of Licences for the Wartime Trade Board, a position for which he served for free. Others include E. P. Taylor and Austin Cotterell Taylor.

Recent examples

Some recent one-dollar salary earners worked in government as well, most notably former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

After promising to take only a dollar a year in November 2016, U.S. President Donald Trump in his first term donated the first three months of his salary to the National Park Service and stated plans to donate all of his salary during the term. He later donated his salary to various federal departments, as he had promised to do during his campaign. In 2015, then 15-year-old Corbin Duncan petitioned the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to take up a $1 salary. The petition was unsuccessful but gained international media coverage.

Instances of alternative compensation

While many executives who take a one-dollar salary also choose not to take any other forms of compensation, a number earn millions more in bonuses and/or other forms of compensation. For example, in 2010–11 Oracle's founder and CEO Larry Ellison made only $1 in salary, but earned over $77 million in other forms of compensation.

In some cases, in lieu of a salary, the executives receive stock options. In the United States, this approach impacts personal tax liability, because although stock and option grants are taxed at federal income rates, they may be exempt from some portion of payroll taxes (typically 7.65%) used to fund Social Security and Medicare.

Executives argue that remuneration through stock instead of salary ties management performance to their financial benefits.

Notable one-dollar salary earners==

The following people have been employed for annual salaries of one dollar:

• Arnold Schwarzenegger (former Governor of California)
• Darren Entwistle (TELUS)
• David Filo (Yahoo!)
• David Lloyd George (former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
• Donald Trump (in his first term as President of the United States)
• Edward Lampert (Sears Holdings)
• Elon Musk (Tesla Motors, SpaceX)
• Eric Schmidt (Google)
• Evan Spiegel (Snap)
• F. Thomson Leighton (Akamai)
• Henry Samueli (Broadcom Corporation)
• Herbert Hoover (former President of the United States)
• Jack Dorsey (Twitter)
• Jan Koum (WhatsApp)
• Jeremy Stoppelman (Yelp)
• Jerry Yang (Yahoo!)
• John F. Kennedy (former President of the United States)
• John Mackey (Whole Foods Market)
• Jon Corzine (former Governor of New Jersey)
• Larry Ellison (Oracle Corporation)
• Larry Page (Alphabet Inc.)
• Lee Iacocca (Chrysler Corporation)
• Mark Pincus (Zynga)
• Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
• Meg Whitman (Hewlett-Packard)
• N. R. Narayana Murthy (Infosys)
• Richard Fairbank (Capital One Financial)
• Richard Hayne (Urban Outfitters)
• Richard Riordan (Mayor of Los Angeles)
• Robert Duggan (Pharmacyclics)
• Michael Saylor (MicroStrategy)
• Sehat Sutardja (Marvell Technology Group)
• Sergey Brin (Alphabet Inc.)
• Steve Jobs (Apple)
• Terry Semel (Yahoo!)
• Vikram Pandit (Citigroup)
• William Clay Ford Jr. (Ford Motor Company)
• William Knudsen (Chairman of the Office of Production Management)

References

References

1. Isaac, Mike. (February 10, 2012). "A Dollar for Your Thoughts: Silicon Valley's Famed Single-Digit Salaries".
2. "10 High-Powered Executives with $1 Salaries". 14clicks.com.
3. (September 25, 1917). "Vanderlip Leaves Biggest Bank and Will Aid McAdoo". [[The Owosso Argus-Press]].
4. Crockett, Zachary. (2019-12-08). "Why some of America's top CEOs take a $1 salary".
5. "31 U.S. Code § 1342 – Limitation on voluntary services". Legal Information Institute.
6. "43 U.S. Code § 1475b – Volunteer authority". Legal Information Institute.
7. "Volunteer.Gov".
8. "How World War I Transformed Washington". Politico Magazine.
9. (March 14, 1919). "One Dollar a Year Men May Lose Two Months' Pay Because of Tax".
10. (July 6, 1918). "Exit the Dollar-a-Year Man". The Independent.
11. Josephson, Matthew. (1952). "Sidney Hillman: Statesman of American Labor". Doubleday.
12. "The Century-Long History of Tapping Wall Street to Run the Government". Smithsonian.
13. (1999). "The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia". Routledge.
14. "National Recovery Administration: Code of Fair Competition for the Petroleum Industry".
15. "National Archives Identifier: 7261744 HMS Entry Number: NC-79 28 Records Relating to the Blazer Committee Hearing, 1933 – 1936".
16. "'E Pluribus Unum!' 'One Out of Many' An Oil Company Grows Through Acquisitions, An Address at Lexington by member Paul G. Blazer, American Newcomen Society, copyright 1956 (page 6)".
17. (September 20, 1926). "Fuller Explains Refusal of Salary". The New York Times.
18. Arnold Beichman, ''Herman Wouk: The Novelist as Social Historian'' (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984), pp. 5 & 13-14.
19. Pace, Eric. (October 28, 1993). "Doris Duke, 80, Heiress Whose Great Wealth Couldn't Buy Happiness, Is Dead". [[The New York Times]].
20. Bailey, Art. "Clarence Decatur Howe". Canada's Digital Collections.
21. James, Mel. "John Wilson McConnell". Canada's Digital Collections.
22. "The History of Metropolitan Vancouver - 1965 Chronology".
23. Tuttle, Mike. (February 3, 2012). "Zuckerberg's One-Dollar Salary: Why Do CEOs Do That?". WebProNews.
24. Ferguson, Kevin. (January 6, 2012). "How does a dollar a year salary work?". [[KPCC (radio station).
25. (Apr 5, 2014). "Tax-Smart Billionaires Who Work For $1". Forbes.
26. (November 14, 2016). "How common is Trump's $1 salary?". BBC.
27. Nguyen, Tina. (March 13, 2017). "Is Donald Trump Actually Donating His Presidential Salary?". [[Vanity Fair (magazine).
28. "Trump-O-Meter: Take no salary". PolitiFact.
29. "Trump-O-Meter". PolitiFact.
30. (September 26, 2015). "Brisbane teenager calls on Malcolm Turnbull to take $1 salary". ABC News.
31. Duncan, Corbin. (October 2, 2015). "Why I want the Prime Minister to give up his $500,000 salary". The Sydney Morning Herald.
32. Brush, Michael. (January 17, 2012). "The myth of the $1 CEO – 1 – executive compensation –". [[MSN]].
33. Herbst, Moira. (September 14, 2007). "The Elite Circle of $1 CEOs". Bloomberg L.P..
34. Mayerowitz, Scott. (December 3, 2008). "The Other Side of the $1 Salary". ABC News.
35. Margolis, Steven M.. "IRS Extends Indefinitely Stock Option FICA/FUTA Tax Withholding Moratorium". Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP.
36. Reich, Robert. (January 9, 2001). "The Future of Success". A. Knopf.
37. (November 14, 2016). "How common is Trump's $1 salary?".
38. (December 31, 1999). "TELUS Annual Report 2011 – CEO letter to investors". About.telus.com.
39. Gillet, Rachel. (August 14, 2015). "13 top executives who make a $1 salary or less". Business Insider Inc..
40. Durisin, Megan. (August 10, 2013). "Musk Gets $4.3 Million of Stock Options for Model X Work". Bloomberg.
41. Wells, Nick. (March 1, 2017). "The real story behind Snap CEO Evan Spiegel's $1-a-year salary".
42. Fox, Emily Jane. "15 top executives with $1 salaries". [[CNNMoney]].
43. (January 2018). "Compensation for Henry Samueli, BROADCOM, Chairman of the Board of Directors (effective May 21, 2003) }}{{dead link".
44. (November 14, 2016). "How common is Trump's $1 salary?". BBC News.
45. "WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton own nearly $9 billion in Facebook stock". The Economic Times.
46. (August 9, 2007). "10-Q Watch: Yahoo's Acquisitions; Yang Salary". [[paidContent.org]].
47. Chen, David W.. (October 4, 2006). "The Goldman Sachs Crew That's Helping Run Trenton Government". The New York Times.
48. Grubb, Jeffrey. (April 5, 2013). "Zynga CEO volunteers to reduce his salary to $1". VentureBeat.
49. (April 2, 2014). "Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's base salary falls to $1". [[The Guardian]].
50. "HP CEO Meg Whitman's salary: $1". CNN Money.
51. (January 6, 2012). "How does a dollar a year salary work?". KPCC.
52. "The 3.55 Billion Dollar Man".
53. Heath, Thomas. (September 8, 2014). "MicroStrategy CEO reduces pay to $1 from $875,000 following criticism of stewardship". The Washington Post.
54. (April 24, 2024). "MicroStrategy's Saylor Reaps a Stock Windfall During Bitcoin's Record Run". Bloomberg News.
55. (January 16, 2008). "Marvell Tech's CEO, Acting COO Take Salary Cut, Each To Be Paid $1". MarketWatch.
56. "Google SEC Filing 2006". Sec.gov.
57. "Apple's 2012 Proxy".
58. (January 7, 2009). "Apple's 2009 Proxy". Investor.apple.com.
59. (April 16, 2007). "Apple's 2007 Proxy". Investor.apple.com.
60. Dash, Eric. (September 24, 2010). "Citigroup's Pandit Takes $1 in Compensation for 2010". The New York Times.
61. (2014). "The Arsenal of Democracy". Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.