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Judge Learned Hand once famously stated that “Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible” and that there’s no duty to pay any more in taxes than is absolutely necessary. And the corollary when it comes to an investment portfolio might be “Any one may so manage a portfolio to defer taxes as long as possible,” given that if the investor ever intends to use the money, eventually the tax bill must still come due, but it still pays to minimize tax drag along the way.
Yet while it’s appealing to manage investments in a tax-efficient manner – or buy “tax-managed” mutual funds to do it for you – in today’s tax environment, there actually is such thing as being too tax efficient and deferring too much in taxes for too long.
The reason is that since the beginning of 2013, investors effectively face four different capital gains tax brackets (including the 3.8% Medicare surtax on net investment income), with higher rates applying to higher levels of income and larger capital gains. Which introduces the possibility that an investor is so tax efficient, and defers their tax liability for so long, that when the taxable event finally occurs, the sheer size of the gains propel the investor into higher tax brackets, who then ends out finishing with less wealth!
Which means ultimately, while “tax drag” is bad, and strategies to minimize it – such as tax loss harvesting – are valuable, doing too much tax minimization now can just cause even more harm later. Instead, for some investors, the best approach is to recognize that in low tax rate years it’s better to harvest the gains instead of the losses. And in other situations, the best way to minimize tax drag is not to buy a tax-managed mutual fund at all, and instead leverage the asset location opportunity of sheltering growth investments that generate capital gains inside of an IRA (or ideally a Roth IRA) instead.