Investing - Theory, News & General • Re: 2025 tax costs for value ETFs

The DFA funds are absurdly tax efficient. I would always hold these in taxable instead of tax advantaged to offset the higher expense ratio.

The question in my mind is to what degree the tax efficiency offsets the higher ER.

Add the expense ratio to the tax cost in your own tax bracket to get the total cost of ownership; this is the amount that your return will lag the stock return in a taxable account.

For international value, there isn't much expense difference between DFA and Avantis, so it makes sense to use DFA's funds if you hold international value in a taxable account. (Vanguard now has a non-factor international value ETF, which probably won't give as much value exposure as the factor ETFs; tax cost data is not yet available.)

For US value, you could use Vanguard's lower-cost VFVA instead of either DFA's or Avantis's funds, as long as VFVA's large/small ratio is acceptable for you.

Statistics: Posted by grabiner — Wed Sep 30, 2026 8:57 pm