Quote Originally Posted by Patler View Post
I have never felt confident in my understanding of my own personal tax implications and filing requirements from owning a BDC; e.g. dividends designated as qualified, non-qualified, return of capital, etc.; the pass through of earnings/losses to the owners without tax at the business level and so forth. For that reason, I have avoided owning them.

I really should put forth the effort to resolve my hesitancies. On the other hand, there are lots of things to own that I do understand!
To make it more complicated some BDCs pay ordinary dividends and others pay qualified dividends. To my knowledge none of the ones worth owning return capital. MLPs "return capital" and book your profits so you pay less until you have recouped 100% of the initial investment. I'm actually not sure which MSDL pays yet because they just went public. OBDC pays qualified which is nice where as ARCC pays non qualified (ordinary) so I keep it in my IRA. MAIN pay ordinary as well, but it has become overpriced (as has OBDC). ARCC and MSDL are very worth buying though.

Edit: Also BDCs don't require anything special, but MLPs mostly (all?) issue a K-1.