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Sure, but this perspective is only for those who are looking to hold an investment for 20 years. A lot of people with large stock holdings also want to buy nice things today. You can do that by (1) getting quarterly dividends and spending them (have to pay taxes), (2) regularly selling some shares (have to pay taxes and reduce ownership) or (3) borrowing on margin. 3 has the biggest tax advantages of the lot.

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This doesn't pencil out. The mistake you made is comparing the return of a leveraged portfolio with a non-leveraged portfolio. Lever up the same in both portfolios and your savings dissapear.

I’ve always wondered, how do you pay off the loan then? Or do these loans not require making regular payments?

You are right about the loan not requiring regular payments. As long as the balance of the loan including interest is substantially more than the amount of posted collateral, the loan can be rolled indefinitely.

You only have to make payments if the value of your collateral falls below a certain value. Called a margin call.

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