Is Mutual Fund Retirement Plans suitable for you

We clarified the taxation aspect in details in the section Tax Treatment of Mutual fund Retirement Plan. Equity funds are tax free after 12 months, but non equity funds are taxed at 20% with indexation benefit after three years.

Regarding the statement you are referring to, maybe it was made from the viewpoint that most mutual fund retirement plans in India are debt oriented. UTI and Franklin Templeton schemes are debt oriented schemes. Tata scheme has 3 plans, progressive (equity oriented), moderate (equity oriented) and conservative (debt oriented). The scheme switches from one to the other depending on the investors age. At the age of 45, the plan switches from progressive to moderate and the age of 60, it switches to conservative. So at the time of retirement the scheme is debt oriented. Reliance has two plans income and wealth. The Income plan is debt oriented and Wealth plan is equity oriented.