Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden’s proposal aims to tax ETFs' use of "in-kind" transactions that currently avoids triggering capital-gains taxes. By closing a decades-old tax regulation loophole, the proposal stands to eliminate one of the ETF industry's key selling points: tax efficiency.
Over the past decade, ETFs have boomed in popularity, with assets of such U.S. registered funds quintupling to $5.4 trillion by the end of 2020, according to the Investment Company Institute. Investors have turned to ETFs because of their low fees, tax benefits, easy trading and broad market exposure.