HDFC Fixed Maturity Plans - 3360 Days - March 2014 (1) - Regular Plan

Suitability:

"Fixed Maturity Plans, as the name suggests, are funds that have a fixed tenure which can vary from three months to five years or even more. Upon the completion of the stated tenure, the fund is wound up and investors' money is returned to them along with accumulated gains. Therefore, they are similar to bank fixed deposits except that they do not offer guaranteed returns even though they aim to better what an FD can fetch.

However, retail investors can avoid these funds altogether. There are far too many kinds of debt funds with a highly nuanced classification based on the type or duration of bonds they can invest in. We believe that so many fund categories add to complexity which is easily avoidable. Retail investors can simply invest in Liquid funds for an investment horizon of up to one year and Short Duration funds for the fixed income allocation (which should be 100 per cent for an investment horizon of up to three years) in their longer-term portfolios."

Taxability of earnings:

Capital gains

• If the mutual fund units are sold after 3 years from the date of investment, gains are taxed at the rate of 20% after providing the benefit of inflation indexation.
• If the mutual fund units are sold within 3 years from the date of investment, entire amount of gain is added to the investors' income and taxed according to the applicable slab rate.
• No tax is to be paid as long as you continue to hold the units.

Dividends

• Dividends are added to the income of the investors and taxed according to their respective tax slabs. Further, if an investor's dividend income exceeds Rs. 5,000 in a financial year, the fund house also deducts a TDS of 10% before distributing the dividend.