When are investments taxed?
Unless your investments are held within a special tax-free account, then every sale transaction is a taxable event, meaning a gain or loss (capital gain/loss or income gain/loss, depending on various circumstances) is calculated at that moment in time. Gains may also accrue on unrealized amounts at year-end, for specific items [in general in the US, gains do not accrue at year-end for most things]. Moving cash that you have received from selling investments, from your brokerage account to your checking account, has no impact from a tax perspective. "An investment is sold when you sell that particular stock or fund. It doesn't wait until you withdraw cash from the brokerage account. Whether an investment is subject to long term or short term taxes depends on how long you held that particular stock. Sorry, you can't get around the higher short term tax by leaving the money in a brokerage account or re-investing in something else. If you are invested in a mutual fund, whether it's long or short term depends on when you buy and sell the fund. The fact that the fund managers are buying and selling behind your back doesn't affect this. (I don't know what taxes they have to pay, maybe you really are paying for it in the form of management fees or lower returns, but you don't explicitly pay the tax on these ""inner"" transactions.) Your broker should send you a tax statement every year giving the numbers that you need to fill in to the various boxes of your income tax form. You don't have to figure it out. Of course it helps to know the rules. If you've held a stock for 11 1/2 months and are planning to sell, you might want to consider waiting a couple of weeks so it becomes a long term capital gain rather than short term and thus subject to lower tax." "This answer is about the USA. Each time you sell a security (a stock or a bond) or some other asset, you are expected to pay tax on the net gain. It doesn't matter whether you use a broker or mutual fund to make the sale. You still owe the tax. Net capital gain is defined this way: Gross sale prices less (broker fees for selling + cost of buying the asset) The cost of buying the asset is called the ""basis price.""  You, or your broker, needs to keep track of the basis price for each share. This is easy when you're just getting started investing. It stays easy if you're careful about your record keeping.  You owe the capital gains tax whenever you sell an asset, whether or not you reinvest the proceeds in something else. If your capital gains are modest, you can pay all the taxes at the end of the year. If they are larger -- for example if they exceed your wage earnings -- you should pay quarterly estimated tax. The tax authorities ding you for a penalty if you wait to pay five- or six-figure tax bills without paying quarterly estimates.  You pay NET capital gains tax. If one asset loses money and another makes money, you pay on your gains minus your losses. If you have more losses than gains in a particular year, you can carry forward up to $3,000 (I think). You can't carry forward tens of thousands in capital losses.  Long term and short term gains are treated separately. IRS Schedule B has places to plug in all those numbers, and the tax programs (Turbo etc) do too. Dividend payments are also taxable when they are paid. Those aren't capital gains. They go on Schedule D along with interest payments. The same is true for a mutual fund. If the fund has Ford shares in it, and Ford pays $0.70 per share in March, that's a dividend payment. If the fund managers decide to sell Ford and buy Tesla in June,  the selling of Ford shares will be a cap-gains taxable event for you.  The good news: the mutual fund managers send you a statement sometime in February or March of each year telling what you should put on your tax forms.  This is great. They add it all up for you. They give you a nice consolidated tax statement covering everything: dividends, their buying and selling activity on your behalf, and any selling they did when you withdrew money from the fund for any purpose.   Some investment accounts like 401(k) accounts are tax free. You don't pay any tax on those accounts -- capital gains, dividends, interest -- until you withdraw the money to live on after you retire. Then that money is taxed as if it were wage income. If you want an easy and fairly reliable way to invest, and don't want to do a lot of tax-form scrambling, choose a couple of different mutual funds, put money into them, and leave it there. They'll send you consolidated tax statements once a year. Download them into your tax program and you're done. You mentioned ""riding out bad times in cash.""  No, no, NOT a good idea. That investment strategy almost guarantees you will sell when the market is going down and buy when it's going up. That's ""sell low, buy high."" It's a loser. Not even Warren Buffett can call the top of the market and the bottom.  Ned Johnson (Fidelity's founder) DEFINITELY can't."
"Your premise is false.  When you withdraw money from a Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA), there is no tax due.  Yes, you can read that again:  withdrawals from a TFSA are tax free.  They are labeled ""tax free"" for a good reason!  After-tax money is deposited, and then from that point forward, no tax, no tax, no tax.  :-) On a ""normal"", non-registered investment or savings account with no special treatment, your investment earnings will be taxed whenever gains are realized or income received (e.g. dividends or interest).  You will necessarily have less in a normal non-registered investment or savings account compared to a TFSA, as long as the rate of return was positive, i.e. growing. Perhaps you were thinking not of comparing a regular investment account to a TFSA, but rather to a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP)? In the case of an RRSP, there is an up-front tax deduction, then earnings grow tax-deferred, and then on withdrawal, income tax is paid at regular rates.  Even then, with RRSPs, if your marginal tax rate remains the same over time (not necessarily a reasonable assumption, but let's go with it) then you should still realize more after-tax income from your RRSP than from a normal non-registered investment or savings account.  (Though, there's likely an exception case when most income came as qualified dividends and the capital itself hasn't appreciated.)" "There are probably many correct answers to this question, but for most people, the main reason is qualified dividends. To be a qualified dividend (and therefore eligible for lower tax rates), the dividend-paying stock or fund must be held for ""more than 60 days during the 121-day period that begins 60 days before the ex-dividend date"". Since many stocks and funds pay out dividends at the end of the year, that means it takes until mid- to late February to determine if you held them, and therefore made the dividend qualified. Brokerages don't want to send out 1099s in January and then possibly have to send out revised versions if you decide to sell something that paid a dividend in December that otherwise would have been qualified." Assuming you are in the US, and are an average joe, the answer to your question is no. Investment costs do not reduce your taxable income for the year you make the investment. They do factor in to the cost basis of your investment and so will affect your taxes in the year you sell the investment. If you want to reduce your taxable income, you could contribute the $5000 to a traditional ira, or 401k, assuming you qualify. Depending on where the account is held, you may then be able to use that $5k to purchase stock in the company you are interested in. The stock would be held in your IRA or 401k account, and would be subject to more restrictions than a normal brokerage account. "1) When it says ""an investment or mutual fund"", is a mutual fund not   an investment? If no, what is the definition of an investment? A mutual fund is indeed an investment. The article probably mentions  mutual funds separately from other investments because it is not uncommon for mutual funds to give you the option to automatically reinvest dividends and capital gains.    2) When it says ""In terms of stocks"", why does it only mention   distribution of dividends but not distribution of capital gains? Since distributions are received as cash deposits they can be used to buy more of the stock. Capital gains, on the other hand, occur when an asset increases in value. These gains are realized when the asset is sold. In the case of stocks, reinvestment of capital gains doesn't make much sense since buying more stock after selling it to realize capital gains results in you owning as much stock as you had before you realized the gains. 3) When it says ""In terms of mutual funds"", it says about ""the   reinvestment of distributions and dividends"". Does ""distributions"" not   include distributions of ""dividends""? why does it mention   ""distributions"" parallel to ""dividends""? Used in this setting, dividend and distribution are synonymous, which is highlighted by the way they are used in parallel. 4) Does reinvestment only apply to interest or dividends, but not to   capital gain? Reinvestment only applies to dividends in the case of stocks. Mutual funds must distribute capital gains to shareholders, making these distributions essentially cash dividends, usually as a special end of year distribution. If you've requested automatic reinvestment, the fund will buy more shares with these capital gain distributions as well." "If you sell a stock, with no distributions, then your gain is taxable under §1001.  But not all realized gains will be recognized as taxable.  And some gains which are arguably not realized, will be recognized as taxable. The stock is usually a capital asset for investors, who will generate capital gains under §1(h), but dealers, traders, and hedgers will get different treatment.  If you are an investor, and you held the stock for a year or more, then you can get the beneficial capital gain rates (e.g. 20% instead of 39.6%).  If the asset was held short-term, less than a year, then your tax will generally be calculated at the higher ordinary income rates.  There is also the problem of the net investment tax under §1411.  I am eliding many exceptions, qualifications, and permutations of these rules. If you receive a §316 dividend from a stock, then that is §61 income.  Qualified dividends are ordinary income but will generally be taxed at capital gains rates under §1(h)(11).  Distributions in redemption of your stock are usually treated as sales of stock.  Non-dividend distributions (that are not redemptions) will reduce your basis in the stock to zero (no tax due) and past zero will be treated as gain from a sale. If you exchange stock in a tax-free reorganization (i.e. contribute your company stock in exchange for an acquirer's stock), you have what would normally be considered a realized gain on the exchange, but the differential will not be recognized, if done correctly. If you hold your shares and never sell them, but you engage in other dealings (short sales, options, collars, wash sales, etc.) that impact those shares, then you can sometimes be deemed to have recognized gain on shares that were never sold or exchanged. A more fundamental principle of income tax design is that not all realized gains will be recognized.  IRC §1001(c) says that all realized gains are recognized, except as otherwise provided; that ""otherwise"" is substantial and far-ranging." You report what you contributed (sum of monthly investments that you made) to the bond fund. Distributions are the earnings in the account that stay in the account and have no tax consequences (in particular, you don't report them as income on your tax returns) until you withdraw the money later. Did you read what I wrote? I sold some stock for a gain, that's a taxable event.  Are you trying to say I just shouldn't have sold it? Do you understand investing at all?   And the second point is moot, I still had to pay the tax, having write offs doesn't change the fact that my taxes were higher(more importantly that they would have been much higher if I couldn't take advantage of capital gains.) "Long-term capital gains, which is often the main element of investment income for investors who are not high-frequency day traders, are taxed at a single rate that is often substantially below the marginal rate they would otherwise be taxed at, particularly for wealthy individuals. There are a few rationales behind this treatment; the two most common are that the government wants to encourage long-term investments (as opposed to short-term speculation), and that capital gains are a kind of double taxation (from one point of view) as they are coming from income that has already been taxed once before (as wage or ordinary income).  The latter in particular is highly controversial, but this is one of the more divisive political issues in the taxation front - one party would eliminate the tax entirely, the other would eliminate the difference. For most individuals, the majority of their long-term capital gains are taxed at 15% up to almost half of a million dollars total AGI, which is a fairly low rate - it's equivalent to the rate a taxpayer would pay on up to $37,000 in wage income (after deductions/exemptions/etc.).  You can see from this table in Wikipedia that it is much preferred to pay long-term capital gains rates when possible - at every point it's at least 10% lower than the tax rate for ordinary income. Ordinary income includes wages and many other sources of income - basically, anything that is not long term capital gains. Wage income is taxed at this rate, and also subject to some non-income-tax taxes (FICA and Medicare in particular); other sources of ordinary income are not subject to those taxes (including IRA income).  Short term capital gains are generally included in this bucket. Qualified Dividends are treated similarly to long-term capital gains (as they are of a similar nature), and taxed accordingly. The ""Net Investment Tax"" is basically applying the Medicare tax to investment income for higher-income taxpayers ($125k single, $250k joint).  It's on top of capital gains rates for them.  It came about through the Affordable Care Act, and is one of the first provisions likely to be repealed by the new Congress (as it can be repealed through the budgeting provision).  It seems likely that 2017 taxes will not contain this provision." No. As a rule, the dividends you see in the distribution table are what you'll receive before paying any taxes. Tax rates differ between qualified and unqualified/ordinary dividends, so the distribution can't include taxes because tax rates may differ between investors. In my case I hold it in an Israeli account but the tax treaty between our countries still specifies 25% withheld tax This is another example of why tax rates differ between investors. If I hold SPY too, my tax rate will be very different because I don't hold it in an account like yours, so the listed dividend couldn't include taxes. If the portfolio itself is taxable, then yes; if you have two stocks and you're rebalancing them, without using new cash, you are forced to sell one stock to buy another. That sale is taxable, unless you're in some sort of tax deferred/deductible account, such as an IRA.   If you're talking about you being in a mutual fund and the fund itself rebalances, the same rules apply as above, though indirectly; you'll have capital gains realized and distributed to you, those gains will be taxed unless, again, your account is a retirement account. First of all, there are some differences between the retirement accounts that you mentioned regarding taxes.  Traditional IRA and 401(k) accounts allow you to make pre-tax contributions, giving you an immediate tax deduction when you contribute.  Roth IRA, Roth 401(k) are funded with after tax money, and a non-retirement account is, of course, also funded with after tax money.  So if you are looking for the immediate tax deduction, this is a point in favor of the retirement accounts. Roth IRA & Roth 401(k) accounts allow the investment to grow tax-free, which means that the growth is not taxed, even when taking the investment out at retirement.  With Traditional IRA and 401(k) accounts, you need to pay tax on the gains realized in the account when you withdraw the money, just as you do with a non-retirement account.  This is a point in favor of the Roth retirement accounts. To answer your question about capital gains, yes, it is true that you do not have a capital gain until an investment is sold.  So, discounting the contribution tax deductions of the retirement accounts, if you only bought individual stocks that never paid a dividend, and never sold them until retirement, you are correct that it really wouldn't matter if you had it in a regular brokerage account or in a traditional IRA.  However, even people dedicated to buy-and-hold rarely actually buy only individual stocks and hold them for 30 years. There are several different circumstances that will generally happen in the time between now and when you want to withdraw the money in retirement that would be taxable events if you are not in a retirement account: If you sell an investment and buy a different one, the gains would be taxable. If you want to rebalance your holdings, this also involves selling a portion of your investments.  For example, if you want to maintain an 80% stock/20% bond ratio, and your stock values have gone up to 90%, you might want to sell some stock and buy bonds.  Or if you are getting closer to retirement, you might decide to go with a higher percentage of bonds.  This would trigger capital gains. Inside a mutual fund, anytime the management sells investments inside the fund and realizes capital gains, these gains are passed on to the investors, and are taxable.  (This happens more often with managed funds than index funds, but still happens occasionally with index funds.) Dividends earned by the investments are taxable.  Any of these events in a non-retirement account would trigger taxes that need to be paid immediately, even if you don't withdraw a cent from your account. Consider the individual who pays $1,000,000 in taxes.  His/her income must be substantial.  That is what one should aim for.  Investments for the most part, do not lower ones taxes.   In one of John Grisham's novels, tax shelters are being discussed.  Sorry, I do not remember which book.  The discussion goes something like this: There are a few investments which can lower your taxes.  Purchase a house.  Mortgage interest on your principle residence is deductible (if you itemize deductions).  If you don't itemize, focus on increasing income to the point where itemizing benefits you. In general, businesses have more deductions than individuals.  Own a small business. You (or your accountant) will discover many deductions.  Hint: the company should lease a car/truck, many meals are now deductible.  This is not the reason to own a business. Factors to consider: For the taxable investments: No matter what, you owe taxes on the gains, known as capital gains. How much, depends on how long you invested it for. In your example, each month is treated separately - each month you contribute starts a new clock on that set of investments. If you hold it for longer than a year, the taxes are treated as long-term, and less than a year is short-term. Short term taxes are at your marginal rate, and long term taxes are different, usually 15%. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc400/tc409 "Very interesting question. While searching i also found that some precious metal ETFs (including IAU) gains are taxed at 28% because IRS considers it ""collectible"", rather than the usual long term 15% for stocks and stock holding ETFs. As for capital gain tax you have to pay now my guess it's because of the following statement in the IAU prospectus (page 34): When the trust sells gold, for example   to pay expenses, a Shareholder will   recognize gain or loss ...."