By Asiz Lalljee, Guest Writer

Taxes cannot be an afterthought in investment management. After asset allocation and fees, taxes most dramatically affect your investment returns. Every step of the investment process – from initial portfolio construction through ongoing portfolio management to realizing portfolio returns – implicates taxes. With tax season upon us, here's a basic primer on how taxes might interact with your portfolio.

 

Tax Deferral in Portfolio Construction

The taxable status of your investment account(s) is a central portfolio decision. You can use a taxable account, a tax-advantaged (deferred) account, or some combination of taxable or tax-deferred accounts as vehicles to alloc\ate and manage your investment portfolio. A separately managed account (the standard investment vehicle for families and small institutions) is typically taxable. IRAs, 401(k) s, investments held in certain types of trusts, and deferred annuities are common tax-deferred or tax-advantaged investment vehicles. Your choice of investment vehicle should reflect your marginal income tax bracket, level of investments, investment horizon, liquidity needs, and purpose of investment proceeds.

[Editor's Note: I disagree that “separately managed accounts are a “standard investment vehicle.” This term is often applied to a method for a financial advisor to gradually transfer money from your pocket to his via high fees. You certainly don't need a separately managed account to have a taxable account- you can just buy a no-load mutual fund directly at Vanguard. Also, be aware that this post has minimal discussion of tax-free or Roth accounts, another option that is generally preferred over fully taxable accounts, at least for retirement investing.]

The basic tax issue in portfolio construction is the timing of the tax incidence: tax is payable upon realized gain in taxable accounts, but is deferred in time or otherwise offset in tax-advantaged accounts. Relative to taxable accounts, tax-advantaged accounts often place significant limitations – as caps on investment value, annual contribution limits, limits on withdrawals, and/or narrowly defined uses for withdrawals – upon the account holder, which may limit their use for any particular investor or portfolio. Violations of these limitations may cause a tax-advantaged account to lose its tax-deferred (or other special) status and become taxable.

tax portfolio

 

The Value of Tax Protection

Tax-deferral can be a valuable boost to your investment portfolio. Assuming your portfolio experiences a constant rate of growth, the present value difference between deferring and realizing gains as accrued can be over 10% in value after 10-15 years of deferral. The difference continues to grow with longer deferral horizons.

By investing in a tax-deferred account you are also showing an implicit preference for being taxed at future, rather than at current, tax rates; the preference is reversed if you choose to invest through a taxable account. So if you expect your marginal income tax rate in the future (say, during retirement) to be much lower than your present rate, tax-deferral may become especially attractive. But if tax rates rise substantially over the course of your investment horizon, the benefits of tax-deferral may be significantly eroded.

Given the limitations of use on tax-advantaged accounts, a basic principle of tax-efficient investing is to make tax-efficient investments through taxable accounts, and tax-inefficient investments through tax-advantaged accounts. A taxable account is typically suitable for investments in individual stocks and bonds held for over a year; stocks or funds that pay qualified dividends; municipal bonds (generally exempt from federal tax); or “tax-managed” stock or bond funds. On the other hand, tax-advantaged accounts should be generally reserved for securities held for less than a year; bonds or funds that generate high yields or non-qualified dividends; actively traded funds; and income from pass-through entities like LLCs or REITS.

[Editor's Note: Unfortunately, proper tax location is more complicated than just putting the least tax-efficient assets into the tax-protected accounts preferentially. You also have to account for the rate of return of the asset. Because of this, it often makes sense to put a tax-inefficent, but low-expected return asset such as bonds into a taxable account instead of a more tax-efficient, but higher expected return asset such as stocks. See this post for more details.]

 

Tax Implications of Portfolio Turnover

The taxable status of your investment account also matters when rebalancing your portfolio to maintain a target allocation across different asset and sub-asset classes. Rebalancing essentially entails selling ‘outperformers' and buying ‘underperformers,' incurring long or short term gains in the process. To offset this, you should rebalance as far as possible in a tax-deferred account, or ‘rebalance' by using new capital infusions to selectively buy ‘underperformers.' Similarly, actively-traded investments and strategies (generating short-term gains) should ideally be pursued through tax-advantaged accounts. [Or even better, not at all-ed.]

More broadly, the timing of investment gains dramatically affects your realized portfolio return. Investment gains are typically classified as Long-term Capital Gains (selling an asset owned for longer than 12 months for profit), Short-term Capital Gains (selling an asset owned for less than 12 months for profit), Ordinary Income (typically includes interest payments and unqualified dividends), and Qualified Dividends. Tax rates on investment gains vary based on your income tax bracket and marital status. At the top income bracket, Long-term Capital Gains and Qualified Dividends are currently taxed at 20%; Short-term Capital Gains and Ordinary Income at 39.6%. The implication here is clear: if you're generating a lot of interest income and short term capital gains in your portfolio (on which you're paying twice the tax you otherwise might pay!), it better make sense as part of your larger financial goals and investment approach.

[Editor's Note: Capital gains tax rates became much more complicated starting in 2014. Forbes has a good discussion of the changes. Basically, you may pay 0%, probably pay 15%, and may pay as much as 23.8%.]

 

Wealth and Income Effects of Changing Tax Rates

Finally, here's a little thought experiment on changing tax rates and your psychology as an investor. Changing tax rates are known to affect your savings and investment choices through the Income Effect and the Wealth Effect.

If tax rates rise, your disposable income is reduced, which might force you to reduce the amount you customarily save and invest. To maintain your original expected “payoff” at retirement, you now invest in riskier assets to offset the reduction in initial investment. You're effectively trying to do more with less – this is the Income Effect at work. On the other hand, rising taxes (and lower after-tax income) might make you feel ‘poorer' and less secure about your retirement. In other words, you become more risk-averse. To compensate, you invest more conservatively because you now have less ‘wealth to lose' – this is the Wealth Effect at work.

How these two opposing forces play out is a function of your wealth and income levels, your ‘marginal utilities’ of wealth and income, and their sensitivity to changing tax rates. Your investment adviser, who should have a through grasp of your risk tolerance and future cash flow needs, can help you anticipate and address the effects of changing tax rates on your portfolio.

 

The Bottom Line

Taxes should be a primary and ongoing focus of every investor. Consistent with your investment goals, liquidity needs, and risk profile, you should strive to maximize your after-tax returns. And your investment adviser's tax sophistication is central to your portfolio health.

[Founder's Note: I have a highly tax-efficient portfolio. It is almost completely contained in tax-protected (and asset-protected accounts,) and I take advantage of tax-loss harvesting and the donation of appreciated shares to charity.]

What do you (or your advisor) do to minimize the effect of taxes on your portfolio? Comment below!

[Editor's Note: Aziz Lalljee is co-founder and co-CEO of Finom, an online platform connecting investors with independent investment advisors. Although this is not a paid post, he is a paid advertiser on this site. He wishes to emphasize that no part of this post is intended, or should be construed, as constituting a specific recommendation, or as tax, legal, investment, or accounting advice. This discussion is general in nature and for informational purposes only; it is not a substitute for professional advice. This article was submitted and approved according to our Guest Post Policy.]