Despite losing money, you may still have a tax bill

Tax planning is usually the least of my financial concerns. Most of the time, just making a living, paying the bills and salting away money in suitable investments are much bigger deals.

But this is a special time of year. Tax season has begun, and brokerages and fund companies are sending out tax forms that the Internal Revenue Service requires for this year’s returns. A lot of them contain bad news.

Nearly everyone lost money in the markets last year — yet many people with investments in taxable accounts are just learning that their money- losing holdings are also generating tax bills. It may seem unjust, but under current rules, when a fund manager sells stocks and bonds that have appreciated in value, or when the fund pays out dividends and interest, these tax liabilities are passed along, even if your investment in the fund lost money.

What’s more, if you bought a fund shortly before it passed along taxable distributions in late December, you will have a tax liability for the fund’s activity over the entire year — even for the months when you did not own the fund.

“That’s an enormous problem with the structure of the markets now,” said Jeremy Roseberry, CEO of Fairshares, a financial services firm in Florida. “It needs to be fixed.”

For individual investors, there’s little you can do except consider issues that could make your future tax obligations less onerous.

The details are mindnumbing, but they matter. If you don’t pay close attention, you could end up with a nasty surprise.

Losses plus taxes

Consider that the S& P 500 lost more than 18% in 2022, including dividends, yet more than two- thirds of stock mutual funds made capital gains distributions, setting off potential tax liabilities for investors, according to Russell Investments estimates. Those distributions amounted, on average, to 7% of the investments in the funds — causing problems for anyone who held them in taxable accounts.

Many funds had longterm gains from the fabulous rallies of previous years, and as the market fell, managers sold securities that had run up in value. Those sales were “tax events.” If you bought a fund last year and held it in a taxable account, there is a good chance that you had the worst of both worlds: investment losses plus tax liabilities.

Some of these liabilities are eye- popping.

The Delaware Sustainable Equity Income Fund lost almost 6% last year, yet it made a capital gains distribution worth 60% of the fund’s total assets in December. Depending on your individual tax situation, as a shareholder you might have to pay 20% of the value of that distribution — or 12% of your investment — to the IRS in capital gains tax.

That happened because the fund transformed itself in the middle of the year. Until August, it was the Delaware Ivy S& P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index Fund. Then it shifted to an environmentally “sustainable” focus, the company said in an email, and its fund managers sold highly appreciated assets of companies that no longer fit its mandate, such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron and SherwinWilliams.

For a variety of funds, income from stock dividends and bond yields produced tax liabilities, too, even when a fund’s share price fell and investors lost money.

Where to hold them

These tax issues are widespread because most American households own mutual funds or exchangetraded funds, investment pools that can cut down on individual risk by providing immediate diversification. I prefer low- cost index funds that mirror the entire global stock and bond markets, but there are many other varieties, including those that are actively managed, or that make narrower bets on sectors or markets.

Whatever funds you use, the most straightforward way to avoid unpleasant surprises is to hold your investments in tax- sheltered accounts such as individual retirement accounts and 401( k) s. As long as your funds remain in these shelters, said Bryan Armour, who directs research into strategies based on index funds at Morningstar, the headaches I’m describing won’t apply to you.

“You want to take full advantage of tax- sheltered accounts,” he said in an interview. “A lot of these tax issues won’t affect you if you do.”

Defining terms

Tax- sheltered accounts have become commonplace in the United States since the 1970s, largely as a replacement for the precious commodities that were disappearing then: pension plans in which employers, not employees, bore the main responsibility for financing retirement; and higher education that families could afford without taking on exorbitant debt.

Tax- sheltered accounts don’t replace these social jewels. But if you work for a living, or have done so, and want to live reasonably well in the current world, you will want to explore the head- spinning range of tax- sheltered accounts.

Their unfortunate names are often borrowed from the IRS tax code: 401( k), 403( b) and 457 workplace savings accounts, and 529 college savings accounts. Sometimes, they are mainly known by abbreviations — like IRAS and HSAS ( health savings accounts).

And some come in both “traditional” and “Roth” flavors ( named after Sen. William V. Roth Jr., R- Del.). The difference is that when you invest in, say, traditional accounts, you can immediately reduce your income taxes that year but will owe taxes later, when you withdraw the money. In Roth accounts, it’s the reverse:

You don’t get a tax break for putting money into the account, but you won’t owe tax later.

How they protect you

Here’s the crucial thing. What all of these tax- sheltered accounts generally do very well is insulate you from taxes on dividends, interest income and capital gains, as long as you hold your investments inside them.

So if you have a choice, try to emphasize tax- efficient funds in taxable accounts. Here’s more jargon: Exchange- traded funds ( which can trade on the stock market all day) tend to be better, from a tax standpoint, than traditional mutual funds, Armour said. Index funds, which merely track markets, are typically more tax efficient than actively managed funds, which tend to trade more frequently. Bond funds and high- dividend stock funds tend to be less tax efficient than simple stock index funds.

Still, if you hold mutual funds within taxable accounts, watch for events that could set off tax liabilities. Abruptly shifting a fund’s focus, as the Delaware fund did last year, is a signal of potential trouble.