Maybe because 4% WR is seen as too high.
I'm in Italy, which shares many of the pluses of Portugal (cheap, good weather and food, plenty to see and do by staying local...), and with our taxation, crazy bureaucracy and generally higher potential for instability I feel like we need more than 4%
Even if 4% is high, I see no need to go as low as 2%...
I'm also based in Italy I don't understand how you think the bureaucracy affects the SWR, and I also don't see the relation to instability (political I suppose?). I take the taxation argument though.
Actually since we are on the topic, the most intriguing thing to me about Italy is how it didn't develop yet to be a country as prosperous as its northern neighbours, since it has a sizeable industry and a tremendous influx of tourists...
Wow, fellow Italians? I thought I was alone on this forum.
Italy's governments just cannot be trusted to provide the same amount of stability and predictability as other more developed nations.
Just to give an example we went in just a few years from having one of the most favorable taxations on financial assets to a much worse one.
Up until 2014, capital gains and dividends were taxed only 12.5%, now it's 26% PLUS a 0.2% tax every single year on all the financial assets that one owns.
The 0.2% is massive, and gets taken out of any WR, and this change happened basically overnight.
I'm north east of Milan, in the city of Monza.
DW and I are originally from Como, so we also hang around there.
Would be great to catch up if you're not too far