Before
you can compare products that you might invest your money in, you need
to know how the fees you pay will be treated for tax purposes.

It’s important that you find out if the fees are before or after
tax. A common way providers create a tax advantage for investors or
savers is by making the fees you pay tax deductible. Essentially, any
fees you pay are deducted from the return before you pay tax, so that
you pay less tax on the return overall. If the fees are before tax,
find out if they are deductible. If not, you could pay proportionally
more tax.

Tax on investment returns

There are three ways you might pay tax, either directly or indirectly, on the investment returns earned by your provider:

1. The provider may be the ‘final’ taxpayer, in which case any returns you receive are after tax.
2. You may receive the gross return and have to put that income in your own tax return.
3. Companies
   you buy shares in can pay tax on their income and when they pay you a
   dividend, you may get an imputation credit. When you include the
   dividend in your tax return, you can claim the imputation credit
   against your tax. This also happens with your returns if you invest in
   a unit trust as they are taxed in the same way as companies.

GST

Find out whether you must also pay GST on your fees. Generally, GST
is not payable on financial services (like investment management or
record keeping associated with the product). However, a proportion of
the fee (say 10%) may be subject to GST because it relates to a
service, such as advice, that does not fit within financial services.
In some cases, GST applies to the full investment fee.

Content provided by Sorted.org.nz, Your Independent Money Guide.