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  5. MSTY: Hello. [Harvest MicroStrategy High Income Shares ETF]
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Q: Hello. I was going to ask you about MSTY:US, one of YieldMax ETFs. It creates synthetic long exposure, then writes covered calls to generate income. I specifically wanted to ask you about how distributions would be treated from a tax perspective as a Canadian. The distributions are options premiums. So would the distributions then be treated as capital gains, or as US dividends? I assume there would also be a 15% US withholding tax.

When I entered the symbol to ask this question, I discovered that MSTY:CA is a Canadian equivalent, although they only have 50% exposure. Do you know anything about the company Harvest? I had never heard of them. Are they an established and reputable company? How would distributions from MSTY:CA be treated from a tax perspective? Thanks for your help
Asked by Donald on March 24, 2025
5i Research Answer:

Under the structure, the majority of distributions is classified as return of capital. This may vary each year, and some portion may be capital gains. Withholding taxes will apply to some of the distributions, but there are usually broker adjustments because of the high ROC component. Harvest has lots of ETFs and has been around a while. We would consider it fine as an ETF manager. Canadian distributions would be taxed the same way.