I think the lesson here is that just because a fund or ETF or CEF has the phrase "Tax-Managed" in its name does not mean that it is very tax-efficient. It pretty clear that ETV is tax inefficient and deserves to go in a tax-advantaged account if one wants to hold it there. It hasn't been all bad since about 58% of the ETV distribution is tax-free return-of-capital, but that leaves LTCG and income for the rest, so it has a taxable yield of 0.416 * $1.33 / ~14.8 = 3.7% although much of the 3.7% is LT cap gains.
So you are missing that most of the dividend you get is return-of-capital which is not taxed. If you are just using the monthly dividend to buy more shares, then what's the point of having the manager churn things for you? They say: Here's your return of capital. You say: Here it is back to buy more shares.
By the same token, just because a fund does NOT have tax-managed in its name does not mean it is not reasonably tax-efficient. A total US market index fund has outperformed ETV over the years and has been very tax efficient. You could sell shares if you wanted to get return-of-capital like you do with ETV.
And a total US market index can go in tax-advantaged accounts just as easily as it can go in a taxable account.
I don't see the need to pay the manager of ETV to play with my money since they do worse than some simple things.
But if you ilke to do this sort of thing, you can do it yourself:
1. Buy 100 shares of VTI.
2. At the end of every month, sell 1 share of VTI and buy it back 1 second later. Make sure you use a broker that has free trades.
This will give you a churn of 12 shares a year plus the dividends of about 2%, so you will have 14% "yield" most of which is tax free. Awesome!
You should select the 1 share to sell each month that is the most advantageous tax-wise: Either a share (or shares) with losses or a share held long-term. After a year, there will be pleny of shares held long-term (up to 99 of them) with this scheme.