Merchant Archive

Would it be a bad idea to drop the tax from offers?

I do deliveries to people, and they are now charged tax on my delivery. That's annoying, because really, it's an under the table purchase. No advertisement.

I also used to offer items to my vendors from a second account, so I could transfer cash over easy. Now, I am taxed on my own purchases.

Not to mention it makes it double taxation on a single item if you are a merchant that manages vendors for crafters.

Its not actually a double tax, and its not seen as such in the real world either. The Sales Tax is a misnomer and its only been half implemented as far as I can see.

Really what it should be is a Goods and Services Tax. Anything that occurs within city limits should be taxed. This includes /tips, access fees, vendor fees, cloning fees, insurance fees...everything should get a tax to equate it out (then you can set the tax extremely low).

Apparently in some places governments give exemptions to primary produce so that the final product doesn't have its price raised, but this is not true of everywhere.

Lets look at the fast food industry. The frozen chips that the store buys, has a sales tax on it. The fat they buyto cook the chips has a tax on it.The electricity that they use to heat the fat has a tax on it. The chips they sell to you has a tax on it. What happens here is that all the taxes simply flow through towards the end result, which is why all our stuff went from under $5 to under $8-9.A 10% GST does not cause items to go from $5 to $5.50, itincreases theprice dramatically...but that's how it works in reality.

If you don't tax the purchase of raw materials, you are in fact failing to tax someone in the chain...and someone is 'winning' more than they should. I could be a major resource seller and be tax exempt from the system (I don't need to run a vendor to sell resources, no house, no vendor, no sales tax, no property tax).

Sure the poor sucker of a customer has to pay more, or the crafter can absorb some of the taxation...but that's how the system works, you change that and the system stops working so well. Of course as per usual the black market kicks in and people start trading with each other directly.

If you really don't want your suppliers to have to pay tax, or if you don't want to pay the tax when buying from your suppliers (depends on how you look at it) then you want to set up a black market delivery warehouse that they can dump into and you can pickup from.

Toran,

Good point on the double tax. I stand corrected. Incidentally, I did in fact set up a vendor in a tax free non-city zone for delivery. At the time not because of the taxes, but because asa good merchant I wanted to make it available to my main suppliers right outside their homes.

I'm also the mayor of my town and know how much maintenance eats up that sales tax so I wasn't really planning on avoiding. I just misunderstood the double tax thing.

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ToranTT wrote:

Its not actually a double tax, and its not seen as such in the real world either. The Sales Tax is a misnomer and its only been half implemented as far as I can see.

Really what it should be is a Goods and Services Tax. Anything that occurs within city limits should be taxed. This includes /tips, access fees, vendor fees, cloning fees, insurance fees...everything should get a tax to equate it out (then you can set the tax extremely low).

Apparently in some places governments give exemptions to primary produce so that the final product doesn't have its price raised, but this is not true of everywhere.

Lets look at the fast food industry. The frozen chips that the store buys, has a sales tax on it. The fat they buy to cook the chips has a tax on it. The electricity that they use to heat the fat has a tax on it. The chips they sell to you has a tax on it. What happens here is that all the taxes simply flow through towards the end result, which is why all our stuff went from under $5 to under $8-9. A 10% GST does not cause items to go from $5 to $5.50, it increases the price dramatically...but that's how it works in reality.

If you don't tax the purchase of raw materials, you are in fact failing to tax someone in the chain...and someone is 'winning' more than they should. I could be a major resource seller and be tax exempt from the system (I don't need to run a vendor to sell resources, no house, no vendor, no sales tax, no property tax).

Sure the poor sucker of a customer has to pay more, or the crafter can absorb some of the taxation...but that's how the system works, you change that and the system stops working so well. Of course as per usual the black market kicks in and people start trading with each other directly.

If you really don't want your suppliers to have to pay tax, or if you don't want to pay the tax when buying from your suppliers (depends on how you look at it) then you want to set up a black market delivery warehouse that they can dump into and you can pickup from.

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Lets take a look at the retail industry in the USA.

In the retail industry, suppliers selling to retailers for resale aren't required to tax the retailers.

End of story.

In many countries there is a Value Added Tax... Tree sold to make lumber, tax. Lumber sold to make a chair frame, tax. Chain frame sold to upholstry factory to make a chair, tax.

Not sure how you can do this here, maybe put a tax on factories or something, but the double taxation here isn't a value added tax, it's just a double taxation. Like the dividends you get from a company you've invested in. The company is taxed, and they give you a dip ofthe profits, and then that gets taxed to.

Though SOE may be afraid to lift it, because then some samming Merchant can spend his time circumventing the taxes by ONLY selling to other peoples vendors. I lame idea, I know, but that may actually be their fear.

We'll see. They should know by now the ire that it is causing people.