Limited Partnership Unit

An ownership unit in a publicly traded limited partnership, or master limited partnership (MLP). This trust gives the unit holder a stake in the income generated by the partnership company. A MLP often distributes all available cash flow from operations to unit holders after the deduction of maintenance capital.

Also referred to as "master limited partnership units" and "limited partner units".

Partnership units are beneficial to investors because the MLP allows the company's cash distributions to circumvent the double taxation that would normally be imposed, which generally means greater distributions for partnership unit holders. In an MLP, the cash distributions of the company are taxed only at the unit holder level and not at a corporate level. Another benefit of this type of investment is that because the units are publicly traded, there is much more liquidity for investors compared to a traditional partnership.

In most cases, these investments are eligible as IRA and RRSP investments.