Photo: Bloomberg. Design: ALM-Chris Nicholls
Fears that a Democratic Congress coupled with a Biden White House will mean higher taxes for investors in U.S.-based ETFs are overblown.
The next administration will surely be looking to raise some taxes, but that doesn't mean that ETFs are in their crosshairs or that the next Congress will aggressively hike taxes. Democrats will have only a slight majority in the House and may not even control the Senate in the next Congress. That will be decided in two Georgia runoff races in early January.
Even if the Democrats win both seats, the vice president would be needed to break a 50/50 tie, and it's likely that some Democrats in the Senate and the House will oppose aggressive tax hikes or even a change in the law that alters the taxation of ETFs.
Under current law, ETFs, unlike mutual funds, do not have to sell their underlying securities, which could be subject to capital gains taxes, when making changes to portfolios. They can instead hand over in-kind baskets of stock to their authorized participants who redeem and create shares in ETFs, which is not considered a taxable event.
Asked about a Financial Times story that raised concerns about eliminating the in-kind redemption and creation advantage of ETFs under the next presidential administration, Dan Clifton, head of policy research for Strategas Securities, told ThinkAdvisor he doesn't think that such a move would reflect "the intention of policymakers" in the incoming Biden administration.
"The focus is going to be on getting broad-based tax increases and trying to solve for income inequality," said Clifton. "Raising taxes on ETFs doesn't solve for the problem, but raising the capital gains tax rate is possible." Moreover, noted Clifton, several executives at BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager and largest issuer of ETFs, are reportedly under consideration for top roles in the Biden White House.
Tom Donilon, chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute who served as deputy national security advisor to President Barack Obama, is reportedly under consideration as CIA director or secretary of state, according to news reports, and his brother Mike has been named a senior advisor.
