Politician Archive
Thread: Taxes FAQ
Has there been a FAQ posted on taxes? Or even just a post with coherent facts about them? I've been reading through tons of posts after doing a search on this forum without finding a cache of this data.
Should there be none in existance, I was hoping to at least find out if income taxes are removed from player accounts automatically, or if they are dependant upon players using the donation feature of the city terminal.
- Acroyear
This week is loaded up for me with getting the top-five issues process complete. If you would like to take on a FAQ about taxes, especially with financial reports being our #2 issue, it would be much appreciated by everyone, I'm sure.
The Politician FAQ in generalneeds revising and updating as well, and I'll be able to give that some attention perhaps next week.
Here is what I know
Income tax is supposed to be optional, but I have never received an email that someone refused to pay it. I thought it required the citizen to select something or do something, but right now it seems automatic. I have it set at 500 in my city, but since there isn't an income breakdown I have no way of knowing what I am really taking in. I believe it is still capped at a 2000 per week.
Sales tax seems to work fine. It is added to the price of something on a vendor. If you put something up for 500 credits and there is a 10% sales tax, the price will show as 550. The tax applies to things offered to your vendor as well.
Property tax works fine too. I wish we could set a different rate for houses, factories, extractors....
Shuttleport fee, every time I have changed it, it reverts back to 100. So I have stopped bothering. This one annoys me a bit. It is only paid if someone purchases the ticket in your town. It isn't really a shuttleport fee but a ticket fee. So if someone buys a roundtrip ticket outside your town, you never get anything from them using the shuttle, that bugs me.
also.. all taxes put into the treasury in real time... (or point of transaction)
thus when you get email of income tax.. that is added to the treasury..
when an item is sold.. that tax is added to treasure at that time
same goes with shuttle and property tax per tick....
makes it harder to track.. especially if you have lots of vendors 
I would be willing to help out a little for information, but I don't have the time to put together the whole document. If you see anything that is an error here, please speak up 
1. Property Tax - This is a percentage increase to all structure's maintenance costs within the city's borders. This amount is automatically factored into the structure maintenance. When you examine a structure, you can see the hourly maintenance rate and it will state on that dialog box what the cities taxes are. I believe these taxes are collected during each maintenance tick for the building (so every hour)
2. Income Tax - This is a flat fee charged to each citizen each week. I have never used this so I do not know when it is actually collected. I have heard that the max amount this can be is 2,000 credits. I have also heard that if the person does not have enough credits in the bank, that they do not have to pay.
3. Travel Tax - This isflat feeadded to the ticket price when people buy a ticket from a shuttle in the city. This tax is not applied to tickets bought that bring people into the city from a different shuttle. This tax can be set from 0 - 1000. Although for many people (including me), setting this tax to zero breaks the shuttleport and forcing me to redeed it to get it working again.
4. Sales Tax - This is a percentage amount added to any vendor transactions that take place in the city. This includes regular vendor listings, as well as offers made too the vendor that are bought by the vendor owner. If a merchant lists an item for 100 credits and the tax is 10%, then the price is shown as 110 credits on the vendor- when this item sells, the merchant collects 100 credits, and the city collects 10 credits.
All taxes are deposited directly into the city treasury. The weekly city maintenance is paid from the city treasury, and the mayor of the city only has limited access to these funds - they can withdraw a maximum of 50,000 credits per day, and each withdraw sends an email to all the citizens of the city with the amount that was taken.
Bajeezus wrote:
This week is loaded up for me with getting the top-five issues process complete. If you would like to take on a FAQ about taxes, especially with financial reports being our #2 issue, it would be much appreciated by everyone, I'm sure.
It was not my intention to suggest that this is something that needs to be undertaken this week by you Bajeezus. We can all see how busy you are just getting our thoughts together on improving the profession.
I'd be willing to takethis on, but I am approaching this subject from a point of ignorance on the matter. I have implemented a light property tax, but the city I am mayor of is largely subsidized by my own water sales and my brother's contributions. Beyond that my experience is nil.
So I'll need everyone's help if I am to collect this information and either create a Tax FAQ orsimply integrate the collected facts and present them to our correspondant for integration into our general FAQ. Can everyone contribute facts regarding the taxes, how they are handled, the details regarding how they are paid, etc.?
- Acroyear
the down side (and we made request in the forum) are more graphical taxes.... something that people can go and look (prefer at the terminal) to show the last 4 weeks (at least) of where the money comes and go...
which area are we getting tax in.. out of X citizens how many are paying taxes??
how much are we getting in sales?? unless we track per sales.. it is hard to get that numbers.. especially if you have a lot of vendors...
how much are we getting property tax??
how much are we getting in shuttle??
currently we don't know these numbers.. all are "guesstimate"... you can do this.. you know your expenses... you know how many people in the city.. you know your income taxes..... thus you can do this..
city cost 100k... citizen 50.. income tax 2k... = 100k which means that out of treasury should be 0 ... but if the city cost is 200k... 50 citizens.. income tax 2k.. then you are 100k in the hole.. but you have treasury of 200k.. but have like 163k left after maintence pay.. which means that 63k came from sale tax, property, and shuttle...
you could break that down even further by checking each home in your city and use a spread sheet to calculate how much property tax you are getting.. (i.e. how many factory, homes, large homes, etc etc) and you can find out the rest are shuttle and sale tax...
after that.. it is all guessing unless you can get all your sale people to submit how much they sold.
ManchildTHWL, I'm not sure what you are referring to. My personal experience is with property tax which appears to work well (maybe too well, since one of our newbie recruits lost a house to it). Can you clarifiy on this issue? I try to keep up on this forum as much as possible butI must have missed this one.
ManchildTHWL wrote:
is the update bug truly fixed yet? can we raise taxes from 0 now?
- Acroyear
I've made a collection of what was on the holocron, what was in the Advanced Player Guide, and what has been made here. Unfortunately the whistle blew as I was finishing it and I had to make a break for the parking lot to get home. I'll post it here tomorrow morning for review and correction by the community at large.
- Acroyear
This has been pulled together from the Holocron, the Advanced Player Guide, and our posts here. Please review it and let me know what corrections need to be made so that it can be submitted to Bajeezus by the end of today (or Monday if we spot glaring issues we do not have answers for). There are some obvious spots where information needs to be filled in.
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Taxes & Maintenance FAQ Info
Taxes are managed from the city management terminal and all tax information is public and can be seen there. There are four types of tax the mayor can collect:
1 - Property Tax - Every player who owns a structure (house, factory, harvester, PA hall, or civic structure) in the city pays a percentage of their maintenance as property tax. This amount is automatically factored into the structure maintenance. When a player examines a structure they can see the hourly maintenance rate and it will state on that dialog box what the cities taxes are.
This tax is known to have the side effect of destroying the homes of inactive or maintenance fee delinquent players. It can do so by removing money at a more rapid rate from their homes, and has been known to cause issues for casual or infrequent players.
This tax is charged per hour in keeping with the scheduled maintenance payment of a structure.
Unknown if there is a cap.
2 - Citizen (Income) Tax - A non-mandatory flat fee tax charged to every citizen of the city. The money is automatically removed from the player's bank should the player being taxed accept the system message prompting for payment. If the player can't pay, the mayor is notified of the delinquent payment via email.
This tax is a charged to citizens on a weekly basis.
This tax has a cap of 2000cr.
3 - Sales Tax - A sales tax added to every item sold by a merchant in the city. The vendor owner sets a price for a given item, and when a customer views that price, they see it with the tax already added in for them to provide transparency.
Tax is collected at the time of purchase.
This tax also applies to the item offered to that vendor.
It is unknown if there is a cap on Sales Tax.
4 - Travel Fee - An additional fee added onto the normal ticket price for traveling from the city.
This fee is known to reset itself daily back to 100cr (bug).
In some instances setting this fee to zero causes issues with the shuttleport that can be resolved only by redeeding it (bug).
The fee is known to apply only to ticket purchases made from the city's shuttleport. Round trip tickets purchased from another location to your shuttleport and back do not produce tax revenue.
Tax is collected at the time of ticket purchase.
There is a maximum fee of 1000cr on the shuttle tickets.
All taxes are deposited directly into the city treasury. City maintenance is evaluated on a weekly basis, after the mayoral election. Each week the total maintenance cost of the city is calculated and subtracted from the treasury.
Each civic structure in the city contributes to the maintenance fee. City hall maintenance is paid first, then the rest of the structures. If the city can't pay for a structure, it will notify the mayor and damage the structure. The status of civic structures may be checked in the city structure report. If a civic structure reaches 0 condition it is destroyed. If the city hall is destroyed, all civic structures are removed and the city is disbanded. A city should take 4 weeks to decay if no maintenance is paid. If the city can't pay for mission terminals, skill trainers, or decorations, it destroys them. The mayor is always notified of this.
Reported bugs in decay include having removed trainers and decorations continue to count against the city's cap on the number of these items available.
The weekly city maintenance is paid from the city treasury, and the mayor of the city only has limited access to these funds - they can withdraw a maximum of 50,000 credits per day, and each withdraw sends an email to all the citizens of the city with the amount that was taken.
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That's what we have so far. Please post any further contributions here.
- Acroyear
BBQ_master wrote:
Would you all concider 1k per week high for a lvl 2 city? We are set to advance pending cap check, but once there, is 1k per week too much? We have 56 members in our PA all laid out for the city, and when the advance comes the new members should be annexed allowing for advancment to the next lvl. I know about the cap I just want to know your opinion on the tax rate.
Take the sum of the money you are paying out in taxes and divide it by the number of resident currently within city hall's radius. That should give you an idea of what is an appropriate tax for your city at any given time. That said the idea of 1k in taxes a week should be acceptable to even the newest of newbies. It is just not a lot of money.
- Acroyear