Engineer Learns Dad's 2014 Mutual Funds Need Their Own Tax Form, Calls Them Dependents

The Daily Rupee, from The IndiaPay Times satire desk. This is satire.

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PLANO, TX. A 28-year-old software engineer learned Tuesday that the mutual funds his father started for him in Pune in 2014 come with their own US tax paperwork, and has since referred to the funds as “my dependents,” according to his roommate.

“Papa said it was a small monthly investment for my future,” said Rohan, an H1B worker in his second year, holding a folder labeled “India Stuff (Do Not Open).” “Nobody told me the future had a form number.”

The discovery came during a phone call with his CPA, who answers client questions only on Sundays between 4:00 and 4:40 PM. She paused for what Rohan called “a long time” after hearing the words “Indian mutual fund.”

“She said ‘complicated’ the way a pilot says ‘turbulence,'” Rohan said. “Calmly. Then she asked me to sit down. I was already sitting. She asked me to sit down more.”

Rohan has since opened a new spreadsheet tab titled “Papa’s Decisions,” which currently has eleven columns and no conclusions. He also located, by Wednesday, a savings account his mother opened “just in case” and a fixed deposit his grandmother mentioned at Diwali, which he had assumed was a recipe.

The CPA reportedly noted that her fee for explaining the funds would exceed what the funds have earned so far, a ratio she described as “educational.”

At 4:12 AM India time, Rohan’s mother forwarded a message recommending neem leaves for “tax stress.” It cited a neighbor’s cousin who “never had this problem, but also never left the district.”

A senior researcher at an institute nobody could name said the situation is common. “Nearly every family with a child abroad contains one parent who made a quietly excellent financial decision years ago and told no one,” the researcher said. “The paperwork arrives later. The parent is always proud. The child is always sitting down more.”

On Wednesday night, Rohan called his father, who answered on the first ring and asked whether something had happened.

“Nothing happened, Papa,” Rohan said. “The funds are fine. They just need some forms.”

There was a pause on the line, witnesses at the apartment confirmed.

“Good,” his father said. “I only wanted you to have something here.”

Rohan said he will keep the funds. He has asked his father for the old statements, which his father plans to print and send by courier, because “email can get lost.” The CPA has agreed to an extra Sunday.

“I’m not upset,” Rohan said, closing the folder gently. “He was thinking about me from eight thousand miles away, in 2014. I just wish he had put a note in the envelope. Something like ‘see CPA.'”

Not satire: if you hold Indian mutual funds while living in the US, here is what the PFIC rules are and why they catch so many families by surprise. Our guide, The PFIC Trap: The IRS Punishment for Your Indian Mutual Funds, has the real numbers.

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