As the brokerage 1099 forms for the 2024 Tax Year are coming out, here is a quick reminder for those subject to state and/or local income taxes. If you earned interest from a money market fund, a significant portion of this interest may have come from “US Government Obligations” like Treasury bills and bonds, which are generally exempt from state and local income taxes. However, in order to claim this exemption, you’ll likely have to manually enter it on your tax return after digging up a few extra details.
(Note: California, Connecticut, and New York exempt dividend income only when the mutual fund has met certain minimum investments in U.S. government securities. They require that 50% of a mutual fund’s assets at each quarter-end within the tax year consist of U.S. government obligations.)
Fidelity has released US GOI percentages for 2024 on their institutional website, but it’s a little hard to read since it includes a lot of funds and share classes that are used by Fidelity-affiliated financial advisors and institutional portfolios. Their tax document page still says “Expected mid February”, and a Fidelity rep on Reddit says that the version meant for retail individual investors is “coming soon”. However, the numbers must be the same, so if you’re itching to start filing your taxes, just carefully match up the CUSIP numbers and away you go.
Here are the results for the most popular core Fidelity money market funds:
- Fidelity® Treasury Only Money Market Fund (FDLXX, CUSIP 31617H300) – 97.0032%.
- Fidelity® Government Money Market Fund (SPAXX, CUSIP 31617H102) – 55.0877%.
- Fidelity® Government Cash Reserves (FDRXX, CUSIP 316067107) – 57.1917%.
- Fidelity® Treasury Money Market Fund* (FZFXX, CUSIP 316341304) – 50.5640%. *FZFXX did not meet the minimum investment in U.S. Government securities required to exempt the distribution from tax in California, Connecticut, and New York.
- Fidelity® Government Money Market Fund Premium Class (FZCXX, CUSIP 31617H706) – 55.0877%. This fund has a $100,000 minimum, but also a lower expense ratio than SPAXX, which means it earns about 0.10% more yield annually as of this writing 2/20/25.
To find the portion of Fidelity dividends that may be exempt from your state income tax, multiply the amount of “ordinary dividends” reported in Box 1a of your Form 1099-DIV by the percentage listed in the PDF. For example, if you earned $1,000 in total interest from Fidelity Treasury Only Money Market Fund (FDLXX) in 2024, then $970.03 could possibly be exempt from state and local income taxes. If your marginal state income tax rate was 10% that would be a ~$97 tax savings for every $1,000 in total interest earned.
On a net after-tax basis, folks with a ~10% state income tax rate will likely find that FDLXX earns more interest than the default core holdings of SPAXX/FZFXX, even though the gross yield of SPAXX/FZFXX is higher than that of FDLXX.
To obtain these tax savings, you’ll have to manually adjust your state/local income tax return. I don’t believe that TurboTax, H&R Block, and other tax software will do this automatically for you, as they won’t have the required information on their own. (I’m also not sure if they ask about it in their interview process.) If you use an accountant, you should also double-check to make sure they use this information. Here is some information on how to enter this into TurboTax:
- When you are entering the 1099-DIV Box 1a, 1b, and 2a – click the “My form has info in other boxes (this is uncommon)” checkbox.
- Next, click on the option “A portion of these dividends is U.S. Government interest.”
- On the next screen enter the Government interest amount. This will be subtracted from your state return.
Standard disclosure: Check with your state or local tax office or with your tax advisor to determine whether your state allows you to exclude some or all of the income you earn from mutual funds that invest in U.S. government obligations.
[Image credit – Tax Foundation]
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Author : Jonathan Ping