Using Tax Alpha to Measure Tax Efficiency

Tax alpha is a measurement of tax efficiency that attempts to isolate the value of active tax management by comparing a manager versus a passive benchmark. This metric is preferred over alternative measures of tax efficiency because it shows the investor’s actual tax experience and uses a custom benchmark to put the results in perspective. The primary shortcoming of using alternative metrics such as turnover, unrealized gains, or loss carry forwards is that they can only indicate the investor’s potential tax experience—not their actual experience.