No you misunderstand, I have no idea what you're talking about. If I bring in 2 million I think worst case for me is I declare it all income in which case I have just north of 1 million after tax. Then I keep investing that so it's not sitting cash obviously so then I retire on the returns which is bare minimum of 40k per year if all I could find to invest my million in was a measly 4% per year for some reason. I don't think I'm missing anything and I think it's pretty silly that people think you need more money than that to retire. Inevitably I'm going to get interested in working in some kind of job after a while so then I will have a real income on top of it. In summary there is zero percent chance that I could not retire having brought in one million after tax. Perhaps the main impedance mismatch here is you are talking with an extremely frugal midwesterner..
