As a non-US residents I find it a bit surprising that hardly anyone lists "taxes" as an expense when calculating stash needed based on the 4% rule. Does that mean that you in reality end up never paying taxes when you sell shares at a profit, receives a coupon on bonds, equties pay dividends or a tenant pays you rent? Does all taxes disappear with proper planning?
As a ballpark, for someone with say 2.0m stash, annual withdrawal of 4% (so 80k) what would a well-planned tax burden be? I realize it varies and is probably complicated based on a long list of factors, but are we talking 0%, 10% or 20% as the closest likely number?
It depends on the structure of your portfolio and your plans. Drawing 80K could look like:
Live in Florida, so no state income tax
40K - from Roth IRAs so no tax
20K - qualified dividends from taxable account, 0% tax rate
20K - shares sold in taxable account, but only 10K of that is a long-term capital gain so again 0% tax rate since our income is still well under the threshold for that rate to go up.
or it could look like:
80K - from traditional IRA - all of it taxed at ordinary income rates plus 10% additional tax since we didn't plan our early withdrawals in advance to avoid this.
and we live in California, so state income tax too!
If you keep your spending low enough, in early retirement it is fairly easy to pay little to no federal income taxes in the US. During accumulation, if you make tax planning a priority you can pay pretty low taxes too, but you have less control since the rational decision will almost always be "make more money if someone is willing to pay it" while you're still working.
In later retirement, once social security and any pensions that might be coming and potentially required minimum distributions kick in from your traditional retirement accounts you lose some of the ability to "call your shot" in terms of income.
You typically will see property tax listed in budgets for homeowners. Renters don't have that as a separate expense so not included for them. Sales tax will typically be baked in to whatever the item is on the budget - groceries, car replacement, clothing.