Distributing Funds vs Accumulating Funds: Which is better?
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It can be challenging to choose between Distributing Funds and Accumulating Funds when you need to choose two funds. The problem is also the same when you must compare two Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs).
An accumulating fund (or ETF) will keep the dividends and reinvest them. On the other hand, a distributing fund (or ETF) will distribute the dividends to the shareholders.
This article will discuss the details of these two options and their pros and cons. By the end of the article, you will know whether you should use accumulating or
Distributing Funds vs Accumulating Funds
Most companies pay dividends to their shareholders. If you hold shares of a company paying a dividend, you will receive cash dividends several times yearly. Since a fund holds many shares, every fund will receive dividends. Once a fund receives a dividend, it must return it to the real shareholders: you!
There are two ways for a fund or an ETF to give the dividends back to the investors:
- It can give back the money directly in cash to the shareholders. Such a fund is a Distributing Fund (or ETF), also called an Income Fund.
- Or, it can reinvest the dividends directly into the fund, increasing its value. Such a fund is an Accumulating Fund (or ETF) or a Growth Fund.
Whether you talk about mutual funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) is the same in this context. A Distributing ETF is simply a Distributing Fund traded on the stock market.
We will go over the differences between Distributing Funds and Accumulating Funds.
Taxes
Capital gains and dividends are often taxed differently depending on which country you are in.
In the United States, you will pay taxes on capital gains and dividends. They are taxed at different rates unless you hold securities for less than a year. On the other hand, in Switzerland, capital gains are not taxed for private investors. Dividends are taxed as regular income at your marginal tax rate. We start to see the difference between the two types of funds with Swiss taxes.
Taxes in Switzerland
Now, there is a myth saying that you will not pay taxes on the dividends issued by accumulating funds. This myth is entirely wrong! In Switzerland, you will pay the same amount of taxes regardless if you get the dividend or if it is reinvested directly into the fund.
In Switzerland, accumulating funds are considered to have a virtual dividend. And they will be taxed as if they distributed this virtual dividend. The Swiss Tax Authority keeps track of some ETFs in the ICTAX system. They will use this system to find out the dividends of your ETFs.
If your ETF is not on this list, you can ask them to add the ETF to the list. If your Accumulating ETF is not on the list and you do not ask to add it, your full capital gains will be taxed as income!
So, from a tax point of view, there is no advantage to either type of fund. However, it is easier in Switzerland to declare dividends rather than virtual dividends since you are sure you will not pay taxes on your capital gains.
To learn more, read my complete guide about taxes in Switzerland.
Taxes in other countries
For other countries, it depends on the tax system.
In the United States, the IRS withholds all the dividends at the source, so there is no difference. For instance, I know that in the United Kingdom, it is also easier to work with distributing funds.
On the other hand, in Belgium, it is more efficient to get an accumulating fund. Indeed, the Belgian tax office taxes dividends on distributing funds, and an accumulating fund allows them to bypass this tax. And in Germany, you will save money by having a distributing fund.
Therefore, it is essential to know your tax system. For most people, it is not an interesting subject. However, if you want to save money on taxes, you should know the details of your country’s taxes.
Tax Withholding
In many countries, tax services are withholding dividends. This is the case in the United States, where most of the world stock market value is. So, you will probably have some U.S. securities in your portfolio. If these securities are paying a dividend, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will withhold some of the dividends.
The IRS withholds 15% for U.S. citizens and 30% for non-U.S. citizens. There is an exception for citizens of a country with a tax treaty with the U.S. (like Switzerland). In that case, these citizens only get a 15% withholding.
Once again, there are no differences between a distributing or an accumulating fund for this case. In Switzerland, in both cases, you can declare the withholding with a DA-1 form in your tax declaration. That means the withheld money will be counted towards what you have already paid in taxes.
For Swiss securities, this is also the same. If you live in Switzerland, you likely have Swiss securities. If they pay a dividend, Swiss tax authorities will withhold 35% of the amount. But, they will not withhold dividends for the accumulating funds. You will still pay taxes on these dividends.
Transaction Fees
When you buy or sell shares of a fund in your broker, you will have to pay some fees for the transaction. For some mutual funds you directly own from your bank, it may be free to sell and buy shares.
If you have a Distributing Fund and you want to reinvest the dividends, you will have to pay some transaction fees to do it.
However, it is not as bad as it sounds. If you are in the accumulation phase, you invest almost every month. At this time, you can simply invest the dividends with the new capital. And if you are early retired, you will use the dividends anyway.
Fund Fees
The fees of a fund, its Total Expense Ratio (TER), is something fundamental when you compare two funds. Sometimes, there is a significant difference in fees between distributing and accumulating funds.
Indeed, sometimes distributing funds has higher fees than accumulating funds. This is especially true for European Funds by iShares. Many of their accumulating funds are cheaper than their distributing funds for the same index.
For instance, for the MSCI World index, iShares offers two funds in Europe:
- iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF (Acc) with a TER of 0.2%
- iShares MSCI World UCITS ETF (Dist) with a TER of 0.5%
The distributing fund is more than twice as expensive as the accumulating fund. It is a huge difference! Fortunately, there are better funds from other providers. However, if I had to choose between these two, I would use an accumulating fund for once.
You may not realize it, but investing fees are very important. You need to pay attention to them!
Performance
Comparing two funds that have different dividend distribution policy is complicated.
If you directly compare the performance of an accumulating fund and a distributing fund of the same index with the same fees, the accumulating performance should be better in the long run.
It is logical since the dividends are reinvested directly and compounded over time. However, this does not mean that an accumulating fund is performing any better than a distributing fund. Both types of funds have the same performance. It just means that it is more difficult to compare them.
In the case of the distributing fund, you will also have some amount of cash that you can use. Of course, if you splurge on the dividends, you will be poorer than if you had the accumulating funds. But if you reinvest them., you should have the same amount in the end.
In practice, you should be fine. Most ETF comparison platforms show you the performance as if the dividends were reinvested into the fund. For instance, this is what justetf does. It makes it possible to compare the performance of two funds with different distribution policies.
Convenience
The big practical difference between accumulating funds and distributing funds is the inconvenience.
Accumulating Funds are much lazier than Distributing Funds. You do not need to do anything with the dividends. The fund will reinvest the dividends for you.
On the other hand, if you have distributing funds, you will have to do something with the dividends that are sleeping as cash in your account. That means you will have to invest it in one of your funds.
I do not think it is too bad. At most, you will receive one dividend from your funds each month. And it is much more likely that you receive one dividend per fund per quarter since most big funds are paying dividends only each quarter.
Since you should invest every month anyway, it should not be an issue to make a slightly bigger trade. And we have already seen that for filling out the tax declaration, it is generally more convenient to have a distributing fund.
Rebalancing
When you have several funds in your portfolio, you may want to rebalance the funds periodically.
If one fund performs worse, you will need to buy more shares to bring the balance back to your target allocation. On the contrary, if one fund is performing well, you may want to stop investing in it or sell some shares until your allocation returns to normal.
Receiving dividends can give you an edge for rebalancing. Since you have extra cash, you can invest this cash based on where your allocation is out of balance. That means the dividends from your most-performing fund could be reinvested in the worst-performing one, bringing back balance. Distributed Dividends can help you rebalance!
Financial Independence
Now, we will review Distributing Funds and Accumulating Funds when FI. Whether you hold one or the other can make a tremendous difference when you reach Financial Independence.
If you are financially independent and live on your net worth, you must use your principal to cover your expenses. For example, you need 4% of your principal to cover your expenses. And we will assume you get 2% dividends from your funds. So, you can cover half of your expenses with dividends.
If you have only Accumulating Funds, you must sell 4% of your principal yearly. All your expenses will be covered by selling your funds. If you have Distributing Funds, you can cover half of your expenses by selling the funds and half of your expenses using the dividends.
With accumulating funds, you will pay more transaction fees since you will have to sell more shares. Receiving dividends from a fund is free, but selling some shares is not!
Normally, capital gains are not taxed in Switzerland. And for most ETFs, we have seen that the tax efficiency is the same since the tax office will distinguish virtual dividends from real capital gains. As such, it should not matter for retirement either whether you are getting your dividends from accumulating or distributing ETFs.
Nevertheless, I prefer the clarity that distributing ETFs offer, on top of saving on transaction fees.
FAQ
What is a distributing fund (or ETF)?
A distributing mutual fund is a fund that passes the dividends directly to the shareholders. Generally, shareholders will receive dividends every quarter.
What is an accumulating fund (or ETF)?
An accumulating fund is a fund that uses the received dividends to purchase more shares of the companies. The shareholders of the funds will never receive a dividend.
Should I prefer distributing or accumulating funds?
This depends on your country. You should prefer the funds that are the most tax-efficient. In most countries, this will be distributing funds. But in some European countries, this will be accumulating funds. In Switzerland, they are both as tax-efficient.
Conclusion
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Overall, Distributing Funds are superior to Accumulating Funds.
They will be much more useful once you are financially independent and ready to retire. You will need cash to cover your expenses. And the dividends will do exactly that. And they are generally more convenient from a tax point of view. They can also help you rebalance your portfolio more efficiently.
Contrary to some popular belief, accumulating funds are not more tax-efficient than distributing funds. You will pay the same taxes regardless of which you use. In most countries, it is easier to declare dividends for a distributing fund than for an accumulating fund.
The only advantage of an accumulating fund is the convenience it offers. However, I believe that this convenience is a bit too lazy. You would be better off investing the dividends according to your allocation rather than blindly allocating it to each fund that generates them.
For all these reasons, I believe that distributing funds are a better option than accumulating funds. When I compare index funds, I generally only consider distributing funds. Only when no good distributing fund is available for an index will I consider accumulating funds.
Now, this stands true for Switzerland. In some other countries, it will not be true. In Belgium, it is better to hold accumulating funds. On the other hand, in Germany, it is also better to hold distributing funds. And in the United States, it makes no difference. Therefore, you must know the details of your tax system if you want to save money!
To learn more about funds, read how to choose index funds and ETFs. Or, if you have already decided which fund you want, read how to buy an ETF with IB.
What about you? Which kind of fund do you prefer and why?
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Hi Baptiste,
thanks for your valuable content!
Considering that dis US ETF are optimized both for taxes payment and tax declaration, do you think that with datalevel offering, buying acc US ETF will be as easy as dis US ETF now when it comes to tax declaration? in other words, is datalevel able to report virtual dividends from acc ETFs? I guess this would be even more optimized as dividends are automatically reinvested for a better compound effect.
Hi JV
That’s a great question. I think they would be able since they are likely using the official database for some returns as well.
However, you mention acc US ETFs, but as far as I know, there are no such things, US ETFs are distributing.
Thanks for the clarification, indeed there are no acc UF ETFs! so it’s still optimized to use US dis ETFs, I think IBKR gives you the possibility to reinvest dividends automatically, reducing the impact on the interests.