IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4717.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Stock Index Mutual Fund Without Net Capital Gains Realizations

Author

Listed:
  • Joel M. Dickson
  • John B. Shoven

Abstract

This paper reconsiders the literature on tax options by examining the ability to defer net capital gains realizations within an equity portfolio whose constituents change over time. Unlike previous studies on the value of tax options, this paper examines after-tax returns to shareholders within an equity mutual fund. The mutual fund context allows certain features of the United States' tax laws -- namely, wash-sale rules and the offsetting of short-term and long-term capital gains and losses -- to be incorporated in assessing the potential improvement in post-tax returns to investors engaging in tax minimization strategies. Specifically, this paper examines the feasibility of managing open-end and closed-end Standard and Poor's 500 index funds which defer net capital gains realizations. A combination of HIFO (highest in, first out) accounting procedures and the systematic booking of significant losses in portfolio constituents would have allowed the open-end fund variant to match the annual pre-tax return of Vanguard's Index 500 Fund while improving annual after-tax performance by as much as ninety-seven basis points through the elimination of all capital gains realizations between 1977 and 1991. Deferring capital gains is shown to be easier for open-end funds relative to closed-end funds while the additional turnover required to implement these strategies is quite modest. The authors name the tax-sensitive funds in this paper 'SURGE (Strategies Using Realized Gains Elimination) funds.'

Suggested Citation

  • Joel M. Dickson & John B. Shoven, 1994. "A Stock Index Mutual Fund Without Net Capital Gains Realizations," NBER Working Papers 4717, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4717
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4717.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Constantinides, George M., 1984. "Optimal stock trading with personal taxes : Implications for prices and the abnormal January returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 65-89, March.
    2. Constantinides, George M, 1983. "Capital Market Equilibrium with Personal Tax," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(3), pages 611-636, May.
    3. Lee, Charles M C & Shleifer, Andrei & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Closed-End Mutual Funds," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 153-164, Fall.
    4. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1983. "Some aspects of the taxation of capital gains," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 257-294, July.
    5. Joel M. Dickson & John B. Shoven, 1993. "Ranking Mutual Funds on an After-Tax Basis," NBER Working Papers 4393, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joel M. Dickson & John B. Shoven, 1995. "Taxation and Mutual Funds: An Investor Perspective," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 9, pages 151-180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Plancich, Stephanie, 2003. "Mutual Fund Capital Gain Distributions and the Tax Reform Act of 1997," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 56(1), pages 271-296, March.
    3. Milevsky, Moshe Arye & Panyagometh, Kamphol, 2001. "Variable annuities versus mutual funds: a Monte-Carlo analysis of the options," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 10(1-4), pages 145-161.
    4. Christoffersen, Susan E.K. & Geczy, Christopher C. & Musto, David K. & Reed, Adam V., 2005. "Crossborder dividend taxation and the preferences of taxable and nontaxable investors: Evidence from Canada," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 121-144, October.
    5. Dickson, Joel M. & Shoven, John B. & Sialm, Clemens, 2000. "Tax Externalities of Equity Mutual Funds," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 53(3), pages 607-628, September.
    6. Barclay, Michael J. & Pearson, Neil D. & Weisbach, Michael S., 1998. "Open-end mutual funds and capital-gains taxes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 3-43, July.
    7. Agapova, Anna, 2011. "Conventional mutual index funds versus exchange-traded funds," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 323-343, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fong, Kingsley Y.L. & Gallagher, David R. & Lau, Sarah S.W. & Swan, Peter L., 2009. "Do active fund managers care about capital gains tax efficiency?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 257-270, April.
    2. Daniel J. Kovenock & Michael Rothschild, 1987. "Notes on the Effect of Capital Gain Taxation on Non-Austrian Assets," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Assaf Razin & Efraim Sadka (ed.), Economic Policy in Theory and Practice, chapter 9, pages 309-342, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Viard, Alan D., 2000. "Dynamic asset pricing effects and incidence of realization-based capital gains taxes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 465-488, October.
    4. Astrup Jensen, Bjarne & Marekwica, Marcel, 2011. "Optimal portfolio choice with wash sale constraints," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 1916-1937.
    5. Klein, Peter, 1998. "The capital gain lock-in effect with short sales constraints," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(12), pages 1533-1558, December.
    6. Douglas A. Shackelford & Robert E. Verrecchia, 2002. "Intertemporal Tax Discontinuities," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 205-222, March.
    7. Klein, Peter, 1999. "The capital gain lock-in effect and equilibrium returns," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 355-378, March.
    8. Klein, Peter, 2004. "The capital gain lock-in effect and perfect substitutes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2765-2783, December.
    9. Eduardo Engel & Alexander Galetovic, 1998. "¿Qué hacer con los impuestos que pagan las ganancias de capital en Chile?," Documentos de Trabajo 46, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    10. Aaro Hazak, 2006. "Dividend Decision under Distributed Profit Taxation: Investorís Perspective," Working Papers 145, Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology.
    11. Baojun Bian & Xinfu Chen & Min Dai & Shuaijie Qian, 2021. "Penalty method for portfolio selection with capital gains tax," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 1013-1055, July.
    12. Bergstresser, Daniel & Pontiff, Jeffrey, 2013. "Investment taxation and portfolio performance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 245-257.
    13. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    14. Marco Realdon, 2013. "Participation exemption and tax arbitrage: Italy’s case," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 77-93, August.
    15. James M. Poterba, 1986. "How Burdensome Are Capital Gains Taxes?," Working papers 410, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    16. Shoven, John B. & Sialm, Clemens, 2004. "Asset location in tax-deferred and conventional savings accounts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1-2), pages 23-38, January.
    17. Frank Seifried, 2010. "Optimal investment with deferred capital gains taxes," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 71(1), pages 181-199, February.
    18. Giampaolo Arachi & Massimo D'Antoni, 2022. "Taxation of capital gains upon accrual: is it really more efficient than realisation?," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(1), pages 39-61, March.
    19. Yaoting Lei & Ya Li & Jing Xu, 2020. "Two Birds, One Stone: Joint Timing of Returns and Capital Gains Taxes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(2), pages 823-843, February.
    20. Zhonglan Dai & Edward Maydew & Douglas A. Shackelford & Harold H. Zhang, 2008. "Capital Gains Taxes and Asset Prices: Capitalization or Lock‐in?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 709-742, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4717. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.