Cities And Housing Archive

I am looking to get examples of cities that are primarily funded by collection of taxes (via the property, income, and sales taxes), not by donations.

What I am interested in seeing, is info about what your city size is, and what kind of tax rates you have in place to fund the city and its structures. Also trying to get an idea what the individual tax burden is for the city's citizens.

I am researching this because I am attempting to alter how the town I live in gets funded, basically wean it off donations, and spead the funding out amongst the citizen base (the city is a metropolis, with about 120 citizens, and roughly 160 structures. Currently the only tax in place is a 1000/cr a week income tax, the rest comes from large, frequent donations.

The city spends over 500k a week to maintain its current level and civic structures. With only a little over 100k a week coming in from taxes, and with just a few individuals paying via donations, I am trying to even out the burden of maintaining the town (and trying to see if this is even possible w/o breaking people's piggy bank's)

I ran some projections of my own using a 18% property tax and increasing the income tax to 2000/cr a week and that comes pretty darn close to break even on paper (and that doesnt include funds that are brought in by the shuttleport and the parking garage.), By my calulations, the indivual owner of a small house (since property taxes are taxed off the maintenance pool of the house) would be an extra 69cr/day (based off of a small house using 384cr/day normally for maintenance with 18% tacked on.)

Some of the arguments I have gotten against funding the town off the tax system have been that the tax level required to run the town would be too 'oppressive' to the little guys. But when I saw that 18% only adds up to an extra 69cr a day, I thought "how is that oppressive?" especially in light of the fact a noob can go into space with a starter ship and loot ship parts for a minimum of 1000cr each. And the income tax being 2000cr a week instead of 1000cr a week? Is that even noticible if you are active? Even if you take the year off and leave 100,000 credits in the bank, you will be covered the whole time, same goes for your maintenance pool.

I should exlain why I am trying to shift over to tax based rather than donation based

It has seemed to me that a LOT of cities and towns got knocked back because of internal dissents, stemming from disputes within the guilds, ,wealthy donors withohlding funds, either willfully, by virtue of leaving the game, or they become unable to pay any more. To me it seems being dependent on the funds of a small # of wealthy players makes for a unstable city government (it makes the city subject to the whims of a few players). To me it seems that the city is more secure if its funding is spread out amongst all its citizens so that the loss of one of the wealthy donors would not spell instant city decay. (we have 120 citizens, why should 4-5 people be footing the bill for everyone?)

Also, when people leave the game they leave their houses behind, taking up space that could be used for a new, active player. If they want to leave their buildings behind, they need to pay for it, and the only way to make any money on those abandoned buildings is via the property tax. With around 160 buildings in town, theres a darn good base to draw from. (and most, about 75%, of the 120 citizens we have are active players)

Also, for new citizens, out city provides a speederbike and a small house. To me only asking 1000cr/week for income tax and then being dependant on dontations is like a privately sponsored form of welfare. Fact is I dont think we have any citizens that would go bankrupt or even close with the tax plan I am putting forward.

SO tell me folks does this seem unreasonable for funding of a Metropolis ranked city of 120 citizens w/ 160 structures?

18% property tax
2000cr income tax

Funding of parks would be by sponsors and donations, all other civic structures funded by the treasury

We maintain a shuttleport, garage, almost a dozen parks, fountains, 2 sets of mission and bank terminals, and a full set of trainers

Lemm know what you think, thanks

Well the plan too is to get more citizens (with new buildings) in and spread that tax out even more, making it possible to lower it as time goes on.

If people still want to dontate, id have them sponsor parks and player event perks, and fund the new houses & bikes for the newcomers.

I may toy with the sales tax even tho it is broken, see how many merchants would be willing to send the money to the treasury on the honor system (I have heard other mayors say that has worked for them).

The underlying goal in all this is to grow the town even bigger than it is, but in order to grow, it needs a more stable, solid funding mechanism

Again what I am trying to guage here, do these numbers sound like something that would break peoples bank and make them go 'omg thats too expensive', or is it a workable, reasonable way to fund the city (I like to think this will work, but I need to get a feel if people would freak over having taxes)

More input please :-) dont lurk, let me know what you think.

/bump

still need some more input, thanks

If you look over on the politician board there are a fair number of posts about how people fund their cities.

Also, see the link in my signature for the Treasury Tool which will help you weigh up the options and see the impact on income and expenditure.