The Hidden Cost of Master Limited Partnership ETFs: Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI) and More

With the big decline in interest rates on traditional fixed-income investments over the past several years, investors have increasingly turned to specialty investment vehicles to provide the income they need from their investment portfolios. Master limited partnerships have grown greatly in popularity as a result, as their unique structure and tax advantages offer distribution yields that are among the most attractive in the financial markets right now.

But as MLPs have gotten more popular, Wall Street has sought to offer diversified exposure to the income-rich investments by creating exchange-traded products that own many different MLPs. Unfortunately, those products often come at a much higher cost than many investors understand.

Later in this article, I’ll talk about how the brand-new Yorkville High Income Infrastucture MLP (NYSEARCA:YMLI) uses the same structure that destroys many of the tax benefits of owning MLPs. First, though, let’s take a look at why MLP investors have looked to ETFs as a way to avoid some of their complexities.

The hassles of MLPs
Master limited partnerships have become so popular because of their high yields, and the reason that their yields are so high is that the MLP structure qualifies for special tax treatment. Unlike most companies, which have to pay corporate-level taxes even before they distribute any remaining profits to their shareholders, MLPs benefit from their partnership structure and therefore don’t have to pay tax at the entity level.

That tax advantage leaves MLPs more money to distribute to their unitholders. As an oversimplified example, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (NYSE:KMP) has Kinder Morgan Inc (NYSE:KMI) as its general partner, with the latter being a corporation. While the Kinder Morgan corporation pays a dividend yield of about 4%, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (NYSE:KMP) pays distributions yielding about 6%. Although the two entities don’t have identical exposure, it gives you a flavor for the tax advantages the MLP structure gives investors.

Moreover, MLP distributions often include income that isn’t fully taxable. Investors often get the benefit of depletion allowances, depreciation, and other favorable tax attributes from the energy businesses that are predominant in the MLP universe.

The problem, though, is that the partnership structure makes tax reporting for MLPs a lot more complicated than it is for regular stocks. Stock investors get simple 1099 forms that allow them to put single-line entries for their dividend income on their tax returns. By contrast, MLPs each issue partnership returns on Schedule K-1, requiring several different tax-form entries and sometimes even specialized tax forms that most investors never have to complete.