Bad news for the 170 companies now being investigated for backdating stock option - the tax man is coming to get you.

The IRS is giving companies the opportunity to pay the 20 per cent tax plus interest their employees would owe on backdated options. It doesn't apply to company executives and insiders who will have to carry the can themselves. Companies will have until the end of the month to notify the IRS whether they'll do it.

Motley Fool says it's like what happened to mobster Al Capone. As we all know, it wasn't murder or that stupid Prohibition law that got the mobster. In the end, it was tax evasion and Public Enemy Number 1 was sentenced to the Federal Prison in Atlanta for 11 years.

"In addition to misrepresenting to the IRS the real profits earned, backdating also misrepresents the true cost of stock options to shareholders. In addition, it gives the recipient unearned profits, causes the company to have to pay higher taxes (while at the same time withholding less payroll taxes), and subjects the company to costly internal investigations and possible restatements of finances," Rich Duprey writes. "While the companies and their employees may end up bearing the brunt of the fallout, shareholders too are harmed by the greed exhibited by these executives. Al Capone, it seems, has nothing on these modern-day corporate gangsters."

Employees would be happy. But others see it differently. Shareholder representatives are up in arms because they say the payouts will hit earnings.

"It's not fair to shareholders. It's not fair to employees," Cheryl Gustitus of Institutional Shareholder Services told the OC Register.

Just goes to show the mess backdating has created. With a tax payment still owing, it's an attack on the public interest in more ways than one.