So, you have a pooled income fund (PIF). How’s your fund doing? We hear a variety of stories from our clients. Some clients have PIFs that are doing well, but many others are looking for ways to close their PIF. Once upon a time, when PIFs were in favor, their attraction was in their relative simplicity compared to charitable remainder trusts. No trust document was needed because it was already in place; the documentation was a simple one or two page Instrument of Transfer. A second advantage of the PIF was the relatively low cost of administration. Charitable remainder trusts require the creation the filing of tax and informational returns for each individual trust. In contrast, the charity was required to file only one set of returns for a PIF, regardless of the number of participants. The reporting requirements to the participants involved a relatively simple Schedule K-1. A third advantage of PIFs was that they could accept smaller contributions than charitable remainder trusts. These features made the PIF arguably the most popular form of life income gift in the 1980s and early 1990s. Oh, how times have changed!