I wonder where that page gets its information. Its own quote links to an IRS document that doesn't seem to mention this case. Other places online recommend against it.
>There has been no IRS ruling on whether ETFs from two different companies that track the same index are considered substantially identical.
>Investment advisors and tax planners recommend against selling an index mutual fund from one fund company and buying another index fund tracking the same stock index from another mutual fund company.
>And while arguably swapping from index funds like SPY to IVV are almost certainly a wash sale abuse (or at least, a transaction that should trigger the wash sale rules)
If you look at Wealthfront's own documentation, when they do tax loss harvesting with ETFs, they find ETFs that track similar but not identical indexes:
Yup it sounds like a bit of a gray area for now. I think for most people it probably comes down to the way your broker reports the transaction on your 1099. I.e. if my broker reports it to the IRS as a "covered" loss, that's probably what I would use when filing my taxes.
>There has been no IRS ruling on whether ETFs from two different companies that track the same index are considered substantially identical.
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/investment-products...
>Investment advisors and tax planners recommend against selling an index mutual fund from one fund company and buying another index fund tracking the same stock index from another mutual fund company.
https://finance.zacks.com/substantially-identical-mutual-fun...
>And while arguably swapping from index funds like SPY to IVV are almost certainly a wash sale abuse (or at least, a transaction that should trigger the wash sale rules)
https://www.kitces.com/blog/the-wash-sale-problem-when-tax-l...
If you look at Wealthfront's own documentation, when they do tax loss harvesting with ETFs, they find ETFs that track similar but not identical indexes:
https://research.wealthfront.com/whitepapers/tax-loss-harves...