ESRBob said:
Calgary Girl;
Some of my friends invest in these, too. Their tax treatment is odd, if I remember correctly, because some of the dividend is considered return of principal, too?
Curious if thre are others out there who have looked deeply into these instruments.
Here's some background info on Income Trusts that I found:
"Sometimes income is the way to go. Even if fixed income securities are not the best performing asset, an income component belongs in virtually every portfolio. Income trusts are one way to do that.
An income trust is an equitized income product, where an equity portfolio is constructed to provide safety of principal and regular fixed income, just like a bond. The kicker is that most of the income is taxed as a capital gain.
Investment trusts burst onto the Canadian investment scene in the mid-1990s. The consistent characteristic of these trusts has been to attempt to generate a high level of tax-efficient income.
The first wave of these investments was royalty trusts, which tended to focus on the oil and gas and other natural resource sectors. More recently, the focus has moved to income trusts. These are designed to provide a high level of tax-efficient income. Most of them generate income using a covered call writing strategy.
Income trusts typically hire a portfolio manager to hold a basket of stocks and sell call options on them. The call options put a cap on how much the stock portfolio can rise but the call premiums also provide income. The portfolio manager decides at what price each call premium definitely in the hand is better than the far-from-definite potential rise in the stock's price beyond that cap.
The end result is a product that pays a fixed, monthly income and that has some limited potential for capital gains. As an added bonus, the monthly income is taxed primarily as a capital gain because that's how options premium income is taxed. The after-tax return, then, can be quite attractive.
Is the income stream safe? What is, in this life? But the typical income trust seeks to generate 8.5% to 9% in income annually, distributed monthly."