With the harmonized sales tax (HST) now in full effect in Ontario, we’re  paying more tax on a number of items, including mutual funds . To help understand what you’re paying and where you might save some money, The Investor Education Fund has launched a handy calculator.

The "How Much Do Mutual Funds Really Cost?"calculator demonstrates how fees and other costs impact your return on different mutual funds. 

User just enters four items: investment amount, numbers of years fund held, fund company, and fund name. Once this is done there are a number of simple sliders and dropdowns that can be used to review how different scenarios impact return. In fact, the page loads with an amount and term pre-populated so all that’s required is picking a fund company and fund name.

The cost to investors, total fees, opportunity cost, and return after fees update dynamically as the user uses the sliders to change variables such as amount term, load and MER.

Using a tab interface the calculator also lets users compare two different funds, while showing the difference in the pie charts below and provides a recommended fund based on the calculation. The site also allows users to add custom funds.

From an investor education standpoint this site hits the mark. Clean and simple design makes it easy to use and results are displayed in a simple and easily understood way. One additional feature that would be helpful, as investors generally don't carry just one fund, is allowing an investor to enter a complete portfolio of funds to see how their portfolio might perform against changes they may wish to make.