[robszumski]

You have to hold the fund on the ex-dividend date...

Pays out once in Dec. If you buy in Feb and sell in Oct, you're not getting your dividend although you earned most of it... If you had VTI, you'd get 3 of them.

[baking]

Dividends are built into the NAV price. It just becomes taxable income when it is paid out.

[robszumski]

Ah right

[TeaBrain]

I'd also thought your idea sounded like it made sense, sort of like how a trader can attempt dividend stripping, but looks like the user baking cleared that up.