When it comes to taxes, I don’t want to give the government a penny more than I’m legally obligated to.

I’m willing to pay my fair share. The military needs to be funded; policemen, firefighters, teachers and sanitation workers need to be paid; and roads have to be maintained.

But I stuff my tax-deferred accounts with Perpetual Dividend Raisers so that I don’t have to pay taxes on the dividends – at least not for a number of years.

Being the “dividend guy,” it’s no surprise that I have dividend payers in my taxable accounts as well. However, while my report card from kindergarten offers evidence to the contrary, I don’t like to share with others – mainly the IRS. So I like to hold tax-advantaged dividend stocks in my taxable accounts.

Master limited partnerships (MLPs) usually provide tax-deferred income to investors – the kind of income I like.

Here’s how MLPs typically work.

The dividend is called a distribution. It consists mainly or entirely of return of capital. As a result, the distribution is not taxed as a dividend. In fact, the return of capital is not taxed at all. Instead it lowers investors’ cost basis and they pay tax on the capital gain when they sell.

So if you bought an MLP at $20 per share and it paid a $1 annual distribution, at the end of one year, you would not pay tax on the $1 as you normally would with a dividend. Rather your cost basis would now be $19 instead of $20.

If you held the stock for 10 years, collecting $1 each year, you’d essentially have 10 years of tax-deferred income. You can see why these kinds of stocks are appealing to investors.

The majority of MLPs own oil and gas pipelines. Their overhead is low. Pipeline MLPs charge a fee to allow energy products to flow through their pipeline. It’s like being a toll collector on a highway.

Now that you understand the concept, let’s look at three MLPs with strong yields that are rated A for dividend safety by SafetyNet Pro.