Tax Benefits working for HF

If you get offered Co-invest, which I would assume would be offered mostly at small SMs, can you have your bonus reinvested without being payed out immediately? With the intention of paying cap gains rather than income tax.

Does this arrangement exist/ is it common?

8 Comments
 

Unless you have a legitimate economic interest in the GP itself (i.e. were part of the formation of the fund and negotiated this) and are on a K-1 as a result then you are just a W-2 Employee receiving a bonus, that you can invest after tax.

Sometimes you can or have to invest part of your bonus in the fund (which usually has some sort of vesting 2-4 yrs) pre-tax. So if you get a $500k bonus it goes into the fund. Fund goes up 20% it goes to $600k. When you take out your money you pay full ordinary income tax just like any other W-2 paycheck. The small benefit comes from compounding at pre-tax dollars and the fund paying your dividend tax, so thats helpful but nothing like PE style tax benefits.

In short basically dont assume any meaningful tax benefits.

 
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This can happen if you are paid in fund units / actual share of the incentive allocation instead of a W2 cash bonus from the management company / fund expense.

  • Fund units from incentive allocation have to be passed through to a GP partner every year. Taxes paid on that allocation are due the same year and are the same rates that clients accrue on gains, so it is not tax deferred but can be a lower rate.
  • Most funds will file trader elections, which means they follow IRS mark to market rules. This means all equity trading is short term capital gains regardless of holding period (i.e. no benefit). However, futures trading (that is not an explicitly a position hedge) will get 60 long term / 40 short term. If there are losses on the equity trading side, those will deduct against the short term first. So there can be years where you pay materially less than ordinary this way. 
  • If fund doesn't file a trader election (only makes sense if most equity positions are held 1+ years or low fixed fees) then the long term cap gains treatment will apply to positions held over a year BUT management fees / expenses cannot be deducted. 

in ~8yrs of this I've averaged about 5-10% less than ordinary income tax rates, and that is probably higher than typical. obviously depends a lot on strategy composition and filing structure of fund.  

 

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