Negotiating the ARF potholes...

Yes, the question was ‘can’ you not take the 4% and you certainly ‘can’. Whether it is advisable is another thing, it appears there are a non zero number of circumstances where it could make sense, but not for most people or most situations.

It’s is a consideration for people to think about pre early retirement for example, if not needing the 4% of their fund yearly, to not create a situation where the imputed distribution is on their entire pension fund. Eg by more careful planning around how to structure your fund than putting it in one big arf, for example by creating multiple PRSAs that are then not vested at the same time.