Mutual Fund Factsheet: What You Need to Know About Fees, Returns, and Tax in India

When you look at a mutual fund factsheet, a detailed document that reveals a fund’s performance, costs, holdings, and risk profile. It’s not marketing fluff—it’s your real-time report card on where your money is going. Most people ignore it, but that’s like buying a car without checking the odometer. A mutual fund factsheet tells you the expense ratio, the annual fee charged by the fund to manage your money, how much you’re losing to fees over time, and whether the fund actually beats its benchmark. If your fund charges 2% and the market returns 10%, you’re not getting 10%. You’re getting 8%—and that gap adds up to lakhs over 10 years.

Then there’s LTCG mutual funds, long-term capital gains from equity funds held over a year. In India, you pay 10% tax on gains above ₹1 lakh. But if you don’t check the factsheet, you won’t know when you crossed that threshold. Same with SWP in India, a way to withdraw fixed amounts from mutual funds monthly, like a salary from your investments. A factsheet shows you the fund’s historical returns, but also its volatility—so you don’t pull out ₹20,000 a month from a fund that dropped 15% last quarter and risk running out of money. And let’s not forget mutual fund tax India, how dividends, short-term gains, and switching between schemes trigger different tax rules. Many think switching funds is free—it’s not. If you move from an equity fund to a debt fund after 11 months, you’re hit with 15% tax. The factsheet won’t warn you. You have to know what to look for.

What’s in a factsheet? The portfolio breakdown—what stocks or bonds it holds. The Sharpe ratio—how much return you get per unit of risk. The AUM—how much money is in the fund. The exit load—how much you pay if you leave early. The benchmark—what it’s supposed to beat. Most investors skip all this and just chase last year’s top performer. That’s how you end up buying a fund right before it crashes. The factsheet is your shield. It doesn’t promise returns. It shows you the truth behind the numbers. And in India, where mutual fund ownership is growing fast but financial literacy isn’t, that truth is rare.

You’ll find posts here that break down how expense ratios quietly eat your returns, how to switch funds without triggering tax, how SWP can give you steady income in retirement, and why LTCG rules matter more than you think. No theory. No jargon. Just what you need to read a factsheet like a pro—and stop letting fund houses make decisions for you.