Insurance Is The Hot New Way To Avoid Taxes

The new hot thing in tax avoidance has a boring old name: insurance dedicated funds. Introduced in the 2000s, IDFs have become so mainstream that banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are offering them. Hedge funds like Paulson & Co. and Israel Englander’s Millennium Partners LP have been managing them for years. For investors, the products provide a legal way to avoid taxes. For investment firms, the premiums are “sticky” -- they make for stable, long-term sources of capital that act as a bulwark against client redemptions at a time when clients just pulled $75.6 billion from hedge funds in the five quarters through March, according to Hedge Fund Research.