Master limited partnerships have always had a love-hate relationship with income investors. You love the yields from pipelines and storage assets. You hate the K-1 tax forms that arrive late and turn your tax filing into a multistate nightmare.

Tortoise Capital thinks it has solved this problem. The firm launched the Tortoise MLP ETF (TMLP) on Monday, promising all the income appeal of energy MLPs with none of the tax-season misery.

The timing makes sense. Midstream energy companies are enjoying stable volumes, disciplined capital spending, and growing free cash flow. For yield-hungry investors, pipelines look attractive again. But accessing them through traditional ETFs meant dealing with either K-1 forms or C-Corp structures that create corporate tax drag and complicate NAV tracking.

TMLP takes a different approach. Instead of holding MLPs directly, the ETF gains exposure through total return swaps wrapped in a regulated investment company structure. Investors get economic participation in MLP performance but receive a standard Form 1099 at tax time. No deferred tax liabilities at the fund level, no accounting headaches.

The fund tracks the Tortoise MLP Index, a market-cap weighted benchmark of energy MLPs involved in transporting, storing, processing, and producing energy commodities. That index has been around for over a decade, giving Tortoise a solid performance history to reference.

Cost matters too. TMLP charges 0.50%, meaningfully lower than many traditional MLP funds burdened by structural inefficiencies.

Tortoise has been in this business since launching the first MLP closed-end fund back in 2004. CEO Tom Florence called TMLP "the modern ETF era" for MLP investing, emphasizing that the lower cost "will meaningfully impact potential investment returns versus the competition."

For investors chasing energy income without wanting to explain K-1 forms to their accountant, this ETF is positioning itself as the cleaner solution.