New technology now exists for wealth managers to provide a "total wealth return" performance report, or an accounting of the total amount of net wealth they generate for their clients. Think that is what you're already getting today? You probably would not be alone, but you would be wrong.

For that to be the case, the companies that sold you those products would have to deduct the taxes they generated for you while pursuing those gains, which can be as much as a 20 percent haircut off of the tantalizing investment returns you may currently be looking at. In fact, current regulations only require investment companies to deduct fees from those results.

Tax haircuts pile up quickly, though: While inclusive of more income sources than just securities investments, Internal Revenue Service data indicate, for instance, that capital gains accounted for about $125 billion in taxes in a recent tax year.

Using new technology today, investment managers could either use your actual tax rate or an assumption about it to calculate your total wealth return from their decisions. This is a more realistic estimate of their impact on your wealth, since it would deduct the tax expenses created for you by the companies you hired to build your riches.

The benefits of a total wealth return are much broader than just a more accurate accounting of your wealth. The real value in this new reporting standard is that it aligns your incentives as an investor much more tightly with the companies you (or your employer) pay to build wealth for you in investment markets.