Trey on Nostr: I hate taxes enough to learn the rules. That may be the most FIRE sentence ever ...

I hate taxes enough to learn the rules.

That may be the most FIRE sentence ever written. You spend years turning paychecks into assets, then one day the question changes from how much you can save to how much income you can create without handing a stupid amount of it back to the government.

The tax code treats wages and long-term capital gains very differently. If you reach FIRE and stop earning W-2 income, you may be able to live on realized gains while staying inside the 0% long-term capital gains bracket, especially when the standard deduction is doing some work for you.

This is not a reason to build your whole life around tax optimization. I still prefer a big-picture plan with enough wealth to be flexible instead of a fragile strategy that only works if every line of the tax code behaves. But FIRE people should understand the terrain.

Bitcoin adds another wrinkle because it does not throw off dividends, does not force taxable distributions, and lets you choose when to realize gains. That kind of control matters when your income is no longer a paycheck.

I wrote about the tax mechanics FIRE people should understand before living off investments: https://firebtc.io/p/tax-free-fire