Mutual Fund Mastery interview preparation

Indian AMCs, distributors, registrars and the global fund houses that hire for the same skills — covering the trust structure, NAV and cut-off rules, SEBI scheme categorisation, debt risk and the Potential Risk Class matrix, passives, costs, taxation and distribution. Every question is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it; we do not invent attributions.

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100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions
100
Traced to a firm
32
Firms
19
Updated
September 2026
Asked at
All firmsVanguard5BlackRock3Franklin Templeton3Invesco3PIMCO3Fidelity Investments2J.P. Morgan2Morningstar2Neuberger Berman2Schroders2T. Rowe Price2Amundi1BNY Mellon1Goldman Sachs1Man Group1Northern Trust1State Street1Sycamore Partners1Wellington Management1
Topic
All topicsFund structure and regulation7NAV and operations6Scheme categorisation4Equity schemes5Debt schemes7Risk, liquidity and disclosure7Index funds and ETFs6Hybrid and solution schemes3Costs, plans and commissions6SIP and investor mechanics5Performance measurement6Taxation5Distribution, compliance and NISM5Portfolio construction and advice5Estimation and numeracy5Markets and industry6Career and fit12
Level
AnyCoreIntermediateHard
Type
AnyTechnicalCaseFitBrainteaserMarket view
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  1. 067Explain tax harvesting in equity funds, and how you would do it for a client this financial year.TaxationIntermediatecase studyWealth and advisoryDistribution and sales

    Say this

    Harvesting means deliberately realising long-term equity gains up to the 1.25 lakh annual exemption and reinvesting immediately, so you reset your cost base for free. Done every year, it permanently removes a slice of future tax from the portfolio.

    Then walk it

    1. The mechanics: identify units held more than twelve months, redeem enough that the realised long-term gain is just under 1.25 lakh, then buy the same scheme back the next day. The exemption is used, no tax is paid, and the new units carry a higher cost of acquisition.
    2. Worked example: a client sits on 4 lakh of unrealised long-term gain. Harvest 1.25 lakh a year for three years and the eventual taxable gain shrinks by 3.75 lakh, saving about 47,000 rupees at 12.5 percent. That is a real return on an afternoon's work.
    3. Constraints to check before you do it. Exit load on any units under twelve months old, though by definition harvested units are older. The holding-period clock resets on the repurchased units, so do not harvest money you might need within the next year.
    4. There is no wash-sale rule in India for gains harvesting, so buying back immediately is fine. For loss harvesting the position is less settled and repeated same-day round trips in the same scheme invite scrutiny, so leave a gap and document the rationale.
    5. Loss harvesting is the other half: realise losses to set against gains, remembering short-term losses can offset both short and long-term gains while long-term losses offset only long-term. Losses carry forward eight years if the return is filed on time.
    6. The operational caution: use the exemption across the whole portfolio, not per scheme, and count listed shares and other equity assets too. And do it in January or February, not on 31 March, because an NAV date and a T plus settlement can push the transaction into the next financial year.

    Where candidates lose it

    Harvesting more than the exemption and creating a tax bill for no reason, or forgetting that the exemption is per person per year across every equity asset. The other real-world failure is leaving it to the last week of March and missing the financial year.

    Expect next

    • What is the difference between harvesting gains and harvesting losses?
    • Does a wash-sale rule apply in India?
    • When in the year would you do it and why?

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.