Defer your taxes. With mutual funds (as opposed to, say, shares of individual stocks), you don’t pay taxes only when you sell the fund. You pay taxes each year on your share of the capital gains realized within the fund’s portfolio. With portfolio turnover in actively managed funds averaging roughly 100% Over one year the average UK active fund is up 10.6%, but the typical UK index fund is up 17%. In the US, active funds are up 24.8% over the year, while Fidelity’s US index fund is up 31.2%. In Europe, active funds are up around 16.7%, but index funds are around 17%. Index funds —whether mutual funds or ETFs (exchange-traded funds) —are naturally tax-efficient for a couple of reasons:. Because index funds simply replicate the holdings of an index, they don't trade in and out of securities as often as an active fund would.Constant buying and selling by active fund managers tends to produce taxable gains—and in many cases, short-term gains that are