《金融时报》切勿仅为避税而投资
把钱投进你真正想拥有的东西，更好。
Better to put money into something you really want to own.
本纳税年度将在本周结束。如果你的邮件跟我的一样，那你正被各种投资要约淹没，这些投资只要在 4 月 5 日或之前投入，就能享受税收减免。
The tax year ends this coming week and if your mail is anything like mine, you are being inundated with offers of investments which qualify for tax relief provided you invest on or before April 5.
其中一些要约是合理的。它们是通过所谓的“外壳”工具（如个人储蓄账户（Isa）或个人自我投资养老金（Sipp））进行投资，从而享受税收减免。你不必为 Isa 内实现的资本收益或收到的股息纳税，也不必为从中提取的任何资金纳税，而且向 Sipp 缴款也能享受税收减免。你可以把合理的投资放进 Isa——股票、现金、共同基金，以及更广泛的资产，包括商业地产，都可以放进 Sipp。
Some of these offers make sense. They are the ones in which tax relief is available for investment through a so-called “wrapper” such as an individual savings account(Isa) or a self invested personal pension (Sipp). You don’t pay any tax on capital gains realised or dividends received in your Isa, or on any funds withdrawn from it, and you can also get tax relief on contributions into Sipp. You can put sensible investments into Isas – stocks, cash, mutual funds, and an even wider range of assets in Sipps, including commercial property.
你真的想投资总资产低于 1500 万英镑的非上市公司吗？而要符合企业投资计划（EIS）或风险投资信托（VCT）的资格，这是必需的。有人应该投资电影吗？去年，在电影行业并非没有经验的迪士尼在电影《异星战场》上亏损超过 2 亿美元。当你主要为了获得税收减免而投资，而不是出于对投资基础资产的真实愿望时，问题就来了。对于企业投资计划、电影融资计划和风险投资信托，我怀疑大多数投资者的主要目的是避税或延税，而非进入这些计划所涉及的、受到严格限制且高度专业化的投资领域。
Do you really want to invest in unquoted companies with less than £15m of gross assets, which is what is required to qualify for an EIS or a VCT? And should anyone invest in movies? Last year, Disney, which is not exactly inexperienced in the movie business, lost more than $200m on the movie John Carter.The problem comes when you invest mainly to obtain the tax relief, rather than because of a genuine desire to invest in the underlying assets. With enterprise investment schemes, film finance schemes and venture capital trusts, I suspect that the main object of most investors is to avoid or defer tax rather than to access the highly restricted and specialised investments which these schemes involve.
我们常常被避税的能力蒙蔽双眼。这不仅导致我们投资那些平常不会考虑的资产，也意味着我们往往不会那么仔细地审视所收取的费用。从我挑选的一批 EIS 和 VCT 产品来看，我发现初始费用占投资金额的 2% 到 7.5%，每年还有 2%-3% 的收费，以及业绩费，通常为任何收益的 20%，尽管是超过某个门槛收益率的部分。费用结构如此丰厚的产品会带来大量销售活动，你也许已经从邮件中注意到了。
We are often blinded by the ability to avoid tax. Not only does this lead us to invest in assets which we would not normally consider, it means we tend not to look as closely at the fees which are charged. From a selection of EISs and VCTs I found initial fees which ranged from 2 per cent to 7.5 per cent of the amount invested, charges of 2-3 per cent each year and performance fees, typically at 20 per cent on any gains, albeit over a hurdle rate. A product with such a rich fee structure generates a lot of sales effort, as you may also have spotted from your mailbox.
这种由微型、缺乏流动性的公司和高额费用构成的组合，会产生一个必然结果。在 131 只 VCT 中，只有 17 只的资产净值高于认购价。更糟的是，你实现 VCT 投资的唯一途径是卖出股票。这通常不是按资产净值进行，而是按股价进行，而股价通常比资产净值低一些。这 131 只中只有 5 只的股价高于发行价，部分原因是二级市场的购买不享受税收减免。
This combination of tiny, illiquid companies and high fees produces an inevitable result. Out of 131 VCTs, only 17 have a net asset value higher than the subscription price. Worse than that, the only way you can realise your investment in a VCT is to sell the shares. That is usually done not at net asset value but at the share price which typically trails the NAV by some margin. Only five of the 131 had a share price above their issue price, partly because purchases in the secondary market don’t attract tax relief.
公平地说，很多 VCT 会分配股息，因为股息也免税，但如果我看一下我唯一投资过的那只 VCT，累计股息加上资产净值，勉强能让我回到七年前认购股票的价格之上。本纳税季邀请新认购的招股说明书显示，自认购以来，不包括认购成本的总回报率为 8%。这不是每年 8%，而是总共 8%。
To be fair, a lot of VCTs distribute dividends, as they are also exempt from tax, but if I look at the only VCT which I have ever invested in, the cumulative total of dividends plus NAV barely gets me back above the price at which I subscribed for the shares seven years ago. A prospectus inviting new subscriptions this tax season shows the total return since subscription excluding subscription costs as 8 per cent. That’s not 8 per cent per year, it’s 8 per cent in total.
你可能会反对说，这是我运气不好或选择不当。但所涉 VCT 在资产净值方面正好位于 131 只 VCT 的中间位置，在 2 月份的《税务效率评论》中，满分 100 分，它得了 86 分。
You might object that I was unlucky or chose badly. But the VCT in question features in the middle of the 131 VCTs in NAV terms, and scored 86 out of a possible 100 in Tax Efficient Review in February.
基于税收的投资的经理人似乎希望投资者关注税收减免后的回报。因此，如果你在 VCT 认购上获得了 30% 的所得税减免，他们会设法让你关注，每投入 1 英镑经过税收减免后实际花费 70 便士所能带来的回报（尽管税收减免实际上是通过自我评估应用到你的税码上，而不是像基本税率养老金税收减免那样加到你的投资上）。
Managers of tax-based investments seem to want investors to focus on returns after tax relief. So if you got 30 per cent income tax relief on your VCT subscription they will try to get you to focus on the return from the 70p each £1 invested cost you after tax relief (even though the tax relief is actually applied to your tax code through self-assessment, not added to your investment as basic-rate pension tax relief is).
这个论点的缺陷在于，那 30 便士是税务局提供的，而不是经理人提供的，经理人拥有 100 便士可投资，当然，这是在扣除那些不算少的费用之前。
The flaw in this argument is that the 30p was supplied by the taxman, not by the manager, who had 100p to invest, before the not-inconsiderable fees, of course.
与其纯粹为了避税，通过这些复杂、缺乏流动性且昂贵的工具，投资那些你平时不会想拥有的资产，通常更好的做法是，投资你真正想拥有的东西，并为所获利润缴纳应缴的税款。
Rather than investing in assets you would not normally want to own through these complex, illiquid and expensive vehicles, purely to avoid tax, it is usually better to invest in things you really want to own and pay the tax due on any profits you make.
这是关于投资基础知识的五部分系列文章的第三篇。
This is the third in a five-part series on the fundamentals of investing.
点击此处查看 FT.com 上的完整文章。
Click here for the full article on FT.com.
Terry Smith
Terry Smith
Financial Times
Financial Times