> One thing I strongly advise not to do: lie about your current salary. Why? If you get hired at the new company and it comes to light that you were dishonest about your old salary (via background check, verifying with your old employer etc), you may be in for a lot of trouble.

I disagree 100%. First of all I would take great issue with my previous employer if they handed out that information (If they I did I would subsequently inform all my ex-coworkers what I was making as all bets are off) and while IANAL I feel like that is not legal and/or you would have legal recourse.

Secondly, why are you assuming that the (potential) employee is the only one that would be lying? I don't trust a word that comes out of the persons mouth when it comes to salary negotiation, it's just not in their or the companies interest to be anything close to "on your side". Hearing "Well you're making more than anyone else here", "You got one of the biggest raises this round of evaluations", "I didn't get a raise so you should be happy you got anything", "That's over what we normally pay for this job" all reek of BS. Unless I see accounting documents I'm not going to believe a word you say (even if I think you are a nice guy/girl or I like working with you, assuming we are talking about a raise not a hire).

The hiring/raise manager job is to get you for a low as possible and since these negotiations only happen about once a year we are talking about < 1hr of time (normally the whole meeting is 1hr with only 15-30 min being on salary, be that for hiring or evals) that you have a small window to effect the other > 99.95% of the time you are working for that company (Assuming a rough ~2000hrs/year). I pull every trick in the book and don't feel one ounce of guilt about it. This is my future we are talking about I'm not going feel bad about bending the truth when I know the guy on the other side of the table is probably doing the same thing. If there was more transparency in the process I might feel differently but there's not and I don't.

Especially with articles like "Your Lifetime Earnings Are Decided in the First 10 Years of Your Career" [0] and "Employees Who Stay In Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less (over 10 years)" [1] I'm not about to take a sword to a gun fight, I'm coming out swinging because I know the other person is going to be. I never give a current salary number (only a range normally) and if they push for a number after I've said no then I feel no remorse in giving them a number that is not accurate. Pay me what I'm worth NOT what you think you can get away with because I know what I'm worth and if you can't pay it, no hard feelings but I'll be looking elsewhere.... Just my 2 cents.

[0] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-09/your-lifet...

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees...

EDIT: Also to the people talking about "good faith" and the like: I'm sorry, I'm not going to take that chance, as I said what may appear to be a small decision can (and will) affect you for the rest of your career. Are you really willing to bet your future on the hope that the person you are interviewing with is going to do what's best for you (a stranger) over the company they work for?