Wealthfront Harvested $1.5 Billion in Losses To Lower Clients’ Taxes In 2022

Final 12 months was difficult for monetary markets. At Wealthfront, we all know it may be gut-wrenching to observe the worth of your investing account decline, even when it’s solely short-term. Nevertheless, when you had been a Wealthfront consumer in 2022, all of that volatility had a major silver lining within the type of Tax-Loss Harvesting. Final 12 months alone, Wealthfront harvested $1.5 billion of losses to assist shoppers decrease their taxes (with $2.8 billion harvested over the past 5 years and practically $3.2 billion over the lifetime of the service). When you multiply that $1.5 billion in harvested losses by an assumed marginal tax charge of 37.5%, you get an estimated $562.5 million in potential tax financial savings for Wealthfront shoppers final 12 months.

 Listed here are extra high-level outcomes at a look:  

• After-tax profit in 2022: When you used Tax-Loss Harvesting in a Traditional portfolio in 2022, our service harvested sufficient losses throughout all consumer vintages and danger scores to generate common estimated potential tax financial savings equal to three.75% of your account worth, or 15 occasions the 0.25% annual advisory fee¹ we cost (assuming a 37.5% marginal tax charge).
• After-tax profit because the service was based: When you use Tax-Loss Harvesting in a Traditional portfolio, our software program has harvested sufficient losses to generate common annual estimated potential tax financial savings value 2.88% of your portfolio worth since we started providing the service (assuming a 37.5% marginal tax charge). This interprets to an estimated annual after-tax profit value 11 occasions our 0.25% annual advisory payment.

As huge believers in transparency, we expect it’s necessary to publish the outcomes of our Tax-Loss Harvesting service so you may clearly see the profit it provides, and we’re proud to be the one robo-advisor to do that. You shouldn’t essentially assume different tax-loss harvesting companies will provide the identical profit as Wealthfront’s—not all tax-loss harvesting software program is similar, and we’ve labored arduous to construct what we imagine is one of the best available on the market. 

On this publish, we’ll take a extra detailed have a look at how Wealthfront’s Tax-Loss Harvesting carried out by the tip of 2022. 

How tax-loss harvesting works

Earlier than we dive into the outcomes, right here’s a fast overview of how tax-loss harvesting works. Tax-loss harvesting is a tax deferral and tax-minimization technique the place you promote investments which have declined beneath their buy worth and substitute them with related investments. While you do that, your portfolio retains the identical common danger and return traits, however you get to “harvest” a loss. When tax time rolls round, you should use these losses to offset capital features. You probably have leftover losses when you’ve offset your realized features, you may then offset as much as $3,000 of extraordinary revenue for the 12 months. You probably have losses left over after that, you should use them in future years. 

A method tax-loss harvesting saves you cash is thru tax deferral, the place you push paying your taxes into the long run. Tax deferral is efficacious due to the time worth of cash. Put merely, when you have the selection between paying taxes at present and paying them years sooner or later, it’s normally advantageous to pay them sooner or later (assuming your tax charge doesn’t rise considerably in that point) as a result of cash you save on taxes at present may be reinvested and thus has the potential to be value extra down the street whenever you do ultimately pay taxes. 

Opposite to what some folks might imagine, tax-loss harvesting isn’t simply tax deferral, nonetheless. For many individuals, it’s additionally a tax minimization technique within the type of tax-rate arbitrage. That’s as a result of tax-loss harvesting can let you offset short-term capital features (that are sometimes taxed as extraordinary revenue, which for the best tax bracket at present has a most federal charge of 37%) at present and pay long-term capital features charges (which at present prime out at 20% on the federal degree) whenever you ultimately promote your investments sooner or later, so long as you maintain them for no less than a 12 months. Understand that your skill to do that relies on your future tax charges and whenever you resolve to promote your investments.

How Wealthfront’s Tax-Loss Harvesting carried out in 2022

To measure the advantage of Wealthfront’s Tax-Loss Harvesting, we use what we name “harvesting yield.” Harvesting yield takes the quantity of harvested losses in a given 12 months and divides that quantity by the portfolio’s worth originally of the 12 months. Greater harvesting yield means our software program discovered and took benefit of extra alternatives to reap losses—and 2022 was a wonderful 12 months for harvesting yield. 

The desk beneath reveals common annual harvesting yield for shoppers with a Traditional portfolio with a danger rating of 8 (the chance rating mostly chosen by shoppers utilizing Tax-Loss Harvesting), sorted by “consumer classic” or the 12 months they first began utilizing our Tax-Loss Harvesting. As you may see, Wealthfront’s software program has harvested important losses throughout consumer vintages and efficiency intervals, all with the aim of serving to you decrease your tax invoice. As you learn the chart beneath, needless to say harvesting yield naturally tends to say no over time, which is why the numbers for the five- and ten-year efficiency intervals are decrease. The explanation? If the worth of your investments rises over time, it turns into much less possible these investments will decline beneath their buy worth and provides our software program a chance to reap a loss. Making frequent further deposits to your investing account will help hold your harvesting yield excessive over time.

Common annual harvesting yield for danger rating 8 Traditional portfolios by 2022

The desk above focuses on danger rating 8 portfolios as a result of they’re the commonest amongst our shoppers utilizing Tax-Loss Harvesting. However our software program has harvested important losses for shoppers with much less well-liked danger scores, too. The dollar-weighted common annual harvesting yield for shoppers utilizing Tax-Loss Harvesting in a Traditional portfolio throughout all vintages and all danger scores is 7.69% since inception, 3.93% over the past 5 years, and 10.01% over the past 12 months. We are able to translate harvesting yield into estimated annual after-tax profit by multiplying harvesting yield by 37.5%, the center of the vary of marginal tax charges we estimate our shoppers might pay (25-50%). This implies the dollar-weighted common annual after-tax profit for all shoppers utilizing Tax-Loss Harvesting in a Traditional portfolio of any consumer classic and danger rating because the service’s inception is 2.88%, which is over 11 occasions Wealthfront’s annual advisory payment. Briefly, Tax-Loss Harvesting generates potential after-tax profit that may considerably outweigh the price of our service.

The evaluation above solely consists of Traditional portfolios (our hottest portfolio), however it’s necessary to notice that our Socially Accountable portfolio has had very related harvesting yield outcomes: 

• The common annual harvesting yield for all Socially Accountable portfolios throughout danger scores and consumer vintages in 2022 was 24.91% (vs. 22.29% for our Traditional portfolio).
• The common annual harvesting yield for all Socially Accountable portfolios throughout danger scores and consumer vintages because the portfolios’ inception in late 2021 was 23.14% (vs. 20.69% for Traditional portfolios over the identical interval).

When you had a personalized portfolio at Wealthfront, you additionally continued to profit from Tax-Loss Harvesting in 2022:

• The common annual harvesting yield for all personalized portfolios at Wealthfront throughout consumer vintages in 2022 was 21.73%. 
• The common annual harvesting yield for all personalized portfolios at Wealthfront throughout consumer vintages because the inception of customized portfolios at Wealthfront in mid-2021 was 17.90%.

How a lot profit you’ll get from Tax-Loss Harvesting

All the figures offered above are averages, and it’s necessary to keep in mind that you can obtain kind of profit from Tax-Loss Harvesting relying on a couple of elements, together with:

• The riskiness of your portfolio. Riskier portfolios are typically extra risky, and extra volatility normally means there are extra alternatives to reap losses.
• While you make deposits. When you make one giant deposit and by no means add extra, it turns into tougher to reap losses over time. Frequent add-on deposits, nonetheless, imply you’ll have extra tax tons in your portfolio and it’s extra possible our software program will have the ability to harvest losses.
• Your marginal tax charge. The upper your marginal tax charge, the extra you’ll save whenever you use losses to offset taxable features. When you dwell in a excessive tax state and have a excessive revenue, you’re prone to get extra profit than somebody in a decrease tax bracket in a decrease tax state.
• Your skill to make use of losses. You may not notice sufficient capital features every year to make use of your entire harvested losses. You may even have unused losses after offsetting as much as $3,000 of extraordinary revenue. That’s okay—you may roll unused losses over to future years.
• Wash gross sales. Often, some profit from Tax-Loss Harvesting may be misplaced to scrub gross sales. Wash gross sales are comparatively uncommon at Wealthfront (they have an effect on about 0.15% of trades excluding withdrawals) as a result of our software program is designed to keep away from them throughout your entire Automated Investing accounts with us. Within the occasion of a wash sale, it’s not the tip of the world—you simply have to attend a 12 months to appreciate the loss related to that transaction.
• Appropriate alternates. Some investments provided at Wealthfront aren’t eligible for Tax-Loss Harvesting as a result of we don’t have appropriate alternate ETFs out there for them, which might decrease your harvesting yield. You may at all times examine to see if an ETF out there at Wealthfront has a Tax-Loss Harvesting alternate by looking for particular investments right here.

Tax-Loss Harvesting is a good job for software program

At Wealthfront, we use software program and automation to avoid wasting you money and time. When you might theoretically do tax-loss harvesting for your self, it could be a major effort and it’s unlikely you’d examine for alternatives to reap losses every day like our software program does (that means your harvesting yield and thus your after-tax profit would in all probability be decrease). 

We’re delighted to supply our Tax- Loss Harvesting service in all taxable Automated Investing Accounts, together with ones which were personalized, at no additional price. This highly effective tax-minimization technique is simply one of many some ways we assist you construct long-term wealth by yourself phrases. 

_{¹ This displays the estimated whole annualized after-tax profit from Tax-Loss Harvesting relative to our 0.25% advisory payment. The calculation was made utilizing shoppers enrolled in Wealthfront’s Traditional Automated Investing portfolios utilizing Tax-Loss Harvesting from 2013 by 2022.}