I have looked into this on and off during the last year’s. The taxation issue - income tax and losses on withholding tax - is nagging me still.
I have no magic bullet either, but here is what I did:
- BRK.B is 25 % of recurring investments because Buffet already paid the tax on the dividends
- when I evaluate ETFs for the same or similar market with a comparable total return, I choose the ETF with the smaller dividend yield (eg QUAL vs SPY though I don’t hold these any more).
- I avoid all types of income investments because after tax and inflation and currency losses the return is usually negative.
I have looked at
- no dividend ETFs, but there is nothing out there. There are a few US tax efficient funds that avoid dividends to some extent.
- commodities: too volatile, speculative
- crypto: I have a bit of BTC and ETH but I still don’t understand it or believe it does anything useful, so I am unwilling to invest larger sums in it
- real estate funds: as I am in the wealth building phase and don’t feel the need of distributions, I prefer share ETFs that are likely to outperform in the long run