Merchant Archive
Thread: Sales tax on offers *TO* vendor in cities
Any item offered to your vendor in cities is taxed as well at the city tax rate. So if you are having resources delivered to you, you will be paying taxes on those resources and the customer will be paying taxes on the finished product you make with those resources.
I see this as horribly bad. Some have mentioned 10% as a tax rate and getting taxed yourself 10% on the resources you buy to make your products and then having the customer be taxed 10% on the finished product can lead to nearly a 20% increase in final cost. BAD BAD BAD.
Some, like myself, often use vendors to pay contractors who offer a 'junk' item to vendor. This is how I currently have paid by suppliers for their lot rentals (they use my equipment, i am paying for their lot, not the product). For me this is millions weekly. I will not be double taxed on items purchased for resale and will likely move a vendor just out of city to still function for offers. (keeping vendor in city for sales).
Taxes are ok. Taxing offers to your vendor is terrible. Let's get this changed. (before anyone quibbles, just about anything offered to a merchant vendor is either resources to make a finished product or finished items for resale)
Yes, I crossposted on Politician forum and Plinka, the Poli Correspondant is forwarding concern. I hope our merchant correspondant would do the same.
DocSavag wrote:
I agree that sales taxes should be removed from offers to vendors. I think I saw a post somewhere that they already looking into this.
The way it's setup now is just like RL. What's wrong?
Why are taxes on sales ok, but taxes on offers not? I don't see the difference. They idea behind taxes is to raise X credits, not to "have" a 5% tax rate.
If you think you're being taxed too much, pettition the city board to lower your tax rate. 
Is it the city's fault that you (ab)use vendors as a money transfer method?
Yajedi wrote:
The way it's setup now is just like RL. What's wrong?
Why are taxes on sales ok, but taxes on offers not? I don't see the difference. They idea behind taxes is to raise X credits, not to "have" a 5% tax rate.
If you think you're being taxed too much, pettition the city board to lower your tax rate.
Is it the city's fault that you (ab)use vendors as a money transfer method?
If they would give us a consignment system this would be a non issue. As it is it does mean that we will have to raise prices on items to make up for the cost of paying the taxes on them, and the customer will then pay another tax on top of that. It has the effect of doubling the rate of taxation on items that are part of an arrangement. Of course you can get around the tax by simply buying all the items on the offer screen for 1 credit and tipping or trading the payment to the supplier. This works fine though the convienience of using the offer system for money transactions is very nice...don't know if it is worth 5% though you can tip via the bank and pay that.
DocSavag wrote:
. As it is it does mean that we will have to raise prices on items to make up for the cost of paying the taxes on them, and the customer will then pay another tax on top of that.
Yes... that is what a tax does. You make less money on stuff you sale, and things cost more on stuff you buy...
Any tax should be offset by a service (shuttleport, etc) offered to you buy the govt. So before you accept any tax, make sure you're getting something in return.
Yajedi wrote:
The way it's setup now is just like RL. What's wrong?
Why are taxes on sales ok, but taxes on offers not? I don't see the difference. They idea behind taxes is to raise X credits, not to "have" a 5% tax rate.
If you think you're being taxed too much, pettition the city board to lower your tax rate.
Is it the city's fault that you (ab)use vendors as a money transfer method?
The big difference is that offers to vendor are for items/resources that are being resold. Hence the tax rate is effectively double what the city set. 10% tax rate equates to about 20% final cost increase to customer.