Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Tax Reporting Basics for Taxable and Tax Privileged Accounts

As an investor, you should understand the difference between your taxable and tax privileged accounts with respect to tax reporting.  I've noticed that novice investors sometimes get confused about this, especially when they have both taxable and tax privileged accounts at the same financial institution (e.g., Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, etc.).  For example, they may hold the same mutual fund in both a tax privileged and taxable account, and they wonder why they got a 1099 tax form for one and not the other.  This article doesn't get into details about tax reporting for earnings from taxable accounts, but just tries to distinguish between tax reporting for taxable and tax privileged accounts at a high level.