Merchant Archive
Thread: What do you feel is a fair sales tax rate for a player city?
I've always wondered about the tax rate and merchants. Now, say I went to the city with a shuttleport. Setup my vendor and the tax rate was 5%. My most common product I sell is clamps at 10k a crate. THe taz automatically sets it to 10500.
Now, I set up my vendor outside a game city 1000m. I sell the same crate. Well, an off-worlder can just shuttle into the city starportand run to my store, save 500c, plus the cost of round trip shuttle tickets to and from the player city. Also saving time!
Is it still worth setting up a vendor in player cities still?
Tomasi wrote:I've always wondered about the tax rate and merchants. Now, say I went to the city with a shuttleport. Setup my vendor and the tax rate was 5%. My most common product I sell is clamps at 10k a crate. THe taz automatically sets it to 10500.
Now, I set up my vendor outside a game city 1000m. I sell the same crate. Well, an off-worlder can just shuttle into the city starport and run to my store, save 500c, plus the cost of round trip shuttle tickets to and from the player city. Also saving time!
Is it still worth setting up a vendor in player cities still?
Well, if you have no competitors IN the town, offering the product without forcing people to figure out where you are and run there, then sure, that's a workable solution.
But that is mainly all depending on how well your established and whether your regulars are willing to pay that extra grand or two for you items, which they are more often than not.
If your vendor charges 11000cr for a product, and a house just outside of your city charges 10000cr, where would most people go?
Sales tax, unless a global implimentation, will never work. Even in real life we're buying things from other countries just to save a few percent. In Galaxies, you don't even have to do that, it's usually just a shuttle ride or a walk.
For items under 3000cr, this effect is multiplied. No-one will even bother to sell items for less than 3000cr on their city vendors, unless they mark them down to accomodate the tax.
There are three other methods of tax, including citizen tax, housing tax and shuttle tax. I can only see bad things coming from sales tax.
Lasalas wrote:
Question for you:
If your vendor charges 11000cr for a product, and a house just outside of your city charges 10000cr, where would most people go?
Sales tax, unless a global implimentation, will never work. Even in real life we're buying things from other countries just to save a few percent. In Galaxies, you don't even have to do that, it's usually just a shuttle ride or a walk.
For items under 3000cr, this effect is multiplied. No-one will even bother to sell items for less than 3000cr on their city vendors, unless they mark them down to accomodate the tax.
There are three other methods of tax, including citizen tax, housing tax and shuttle tax. I can only see bad things coming from sales tax.
They would complain about the tax rate but they would go to the store that causes them the least amount of work to get to. Should you mark your items down to compete with the shop without sales tax? Maybe but that depends on if you are losing business to them. I'm betting your shop right near the shuttle port has so much business without a discount you never even consider it.
Housing tax, citizen tax and shuttle taxes are not enough to make the funds needed for large cities to pay for themselves. Sales tax are the only way to do that. If they are kept to a reasonable level they will not be a problem.
I agree with Chataka.
You now have added expenses in the player city. You should definately not lower your prices. I charge a little bit more because of my location. You might look at increasing prices or selling complimentary items at a slightly inflated price. I often look at my store as a convenience store.
I'm still not sold on City Sales Tax.
If I was on Naboo, and knew of a store at a plyer city on Tatooine:
Buy a ticket to starport, buy ticket to player city, pay for item plus tax, buy a ticket back to starport, wait for shuttle.
If I was on Naboo and knew a store 1.5km from Bestine:
Buy a ticket to starport, run to store, pay for item, run back to starport. I savecreds from Tax, Round trip tickets to Player City, and Time fromwaiting for the Shuttles.
Merchantsin player cities will have to offer gonga deals to make poeple want to go out of their way to visit. Perhaps it'll be good for the consumer, but does it benefit the merchant?
Tomasi wrote:
I'm still not sold on City Sales Tax.
If I was on Naboo, and knew of a store at a plyer city on Tatooine:
Buy a ticket to starport, buy ticket to player city, pay for item plus tax, buy a ticket back to starport, wait for shuttle.
If I was on Naboo and knew a store 1.5km from Bestine:
Buy a ticket to starport, run to store, pay for item, run back to starport. I savecreds from Tax, Round trip tickets to Player City, and Time fromwaiting for the Shuttles.
Merchantsin player cities will have to offer gonga deals to make poeple want to go out of their way to visit. Perhaps it'll be good for the consumer, but does it benefit the merchant?
If the store is less than 1.5k from a static shuttle port you are right you might not get the sales from those people shuttling in..the idea would be to create a shopping area in your city that pulls people in to the shear volumne of items for sale...multiple vendors all well stocked will get people to come back again and again instead of running around looking at random vendors that are empty half the time anyway. People pay a little extra if they are comfortable knowing that they will get good quality merchandise and the vendor won't be empty half the time they show up to buy something.
Here's the thing. My shop near Bestine is already well establised. Some of the shop around me are moving to new player cities, some are staying. A couple of friends of mine are already talking about moving in once these people move out. Now we have our own 'unofficial' vendor city. Spamming at starports andregistering our vendors on the planetary map for advertising will keep a loyal customer base.
Sheer volume of merchants/items inareas outside popular starportshave already been established before player cities.
Even getting sheer volume of items on sale in player cities will still have to rely on advertising in large starports as well as word-of-mouth, but the ones closest to the starports will still have an advantage, unless the merchant is offering fantastic deals/items to draw in customers to pay the extra, or cut into the merchants profits by offeringit at a discounted price.