I'd like to understand how the tax bill of late 2017 affects the taxation of incentive stock options (ISOs) for employees of a private company.

Among other things, the bill incorporated many of the provisions of H.R.3084/S.1444 ("Empowering Employees through Stock Ownership Act") with some differences in e.g. the number of years involved.

The language introduced seems to provide greater flexibility to "qualified" employees* with respect to the year in which the "income" from the exercise of ISOs is considered taxable, in particular when the resulting shares are illiquid.

1. Is it the case that qualified employee can now exercise an ISO and defer being taxed for it for a new, longer amount of time? (Up to 5 years in some cases.)

2. Does that apply for the purposes of the AMT as well?

3. If it does, why aren’t more people talking about this?

* "Excluded" employees include the CEO, CFO, the year's four highest compensated officers, and a few other cases.