Politician Archive
Thread: Sales taxes examined
Interesting. So i decide to sell something for 20k, and it now costs the consumer 21k. I get an email saying it sold for 21k. i receive 20k, the treasury receives 1k.
Personally, i'd rather pay the sales tax out of pocket than have the customer pay it. I think it would be detrimental to high dollar merchants - architects, high end WS's, resource vendors, etc. Well, more in fact detrimental to their customers.
Further, anything offered to your vendor gets charged the sales tax as well. So if someone buys something for 21k and doesnt like it, they offer it back for 21k they paid for it. i offered it for 20k, now i just lost 1k. wait, more than 1k, because i have to buy it back at 22050. that just doesnt sit well, losing 5 percent twice on a missell...
i'm aware that cities require income. I'm just looking at it from this standpoint. I'm a moderately successful merchant. My customers paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 15k today in taxes. thats one vendor, one day.
I'd much prefer to see a flat tax available to politicans, where they can set an amount per sale, not a percentage of the sales price. at least the option anyway. and offers should no way in heck be subject to the tax =(
thoughts?
Let's look at sales tax in RL... when you buy a bottle of soda, you pay sales tax... when you buy a piece of furniture you pay sales tax... when you buy a car you pay sales tax..
so let's go on a flat rate tax assumption and get alittle wild with it.... what you are in effect saying is that the 5k paid in sales tax on the car should be the same exact amount tax paid on the $1 bottle of soda...
no sales tax needs to be a percentage... if you can afford to buy the "higher" priced items then getting an extra 5% should be no issue....
the only problem I see is that offers to vendors should be tax free, because they are ussually intended for resale... yes this can be exploited but we need to try and keep it fair.
Also, ingame and in RL some people adjust the prices of their sales so the final selling price appears to the customer as being tax free.... hence paying the sales tax out of their own pocket... try that if you don't want your customers paying an extra 5%
im looking at this from the side of the mayor. what brings people to your city. Mission terminals? haha. Shuttleports? nah. pretty fountains? highly unlikely.
In order, the reason cities can and do exist are because of residence and merchants. WIthout merchants your cities become nothing more than a collection of houses and mission terminals.
And i didnt say sales tax was a bad thing. I agree that the city should pay for itself. However a moderately successful city, with a handfull of moderately successful merchants, even at a 1% salestax, would generate much more income than the maintenance pool requires. All im suggesting is the option to make it a flat tax. THe bazaar is a flat tax. Vendors themselves are a flat rate.
also, in real life you can vote your conscience and your wallet. I belive doing that in this game is currently called griefing. =)
i also think that the email should be changed when you buy or sell an item. 'You sold blah blah to playerx for 21,000 credits. 1,000 credits of the sale price was placed in the city treasury', and the customer should also see that the sales tax was paid, not that the merchant is just charging funky prices. 'You won the auction of blahblah for 21,000 credits. 1,000 of this price was paid to the city treasury'.
I'm just offering up my opinions as a merchant...take em as they are...but politicians beware, successful merchants dont need cities as much as you need the merchants...i can drop a merchant tent outside major starports and do business just as easily as i can placing them in a city, rank3 or not, since thats just an extra shuttle trip there and back for customers.
Also keep in mind, that in RL sales tax IS paid by the merchants/sellers. They just usually pass the cost along to the customer. Use tax, something for mail order and internet purchases (maybe more?), is paid by the consumer, and its voluntary (no real enforcement, that I've ever heard of).
yes you are both right in most of your assesments... all I'm saying is that sales tax isn't a bad thing... and 5% as it is in your city.. and mine... isn't unreasonable...
And the bazzaar doesn't have a sales tax imposed... it is a listing fee (at least it didn't last time I was there... It's been a while)
You have your opinions Ihave mine.... that's fine by me... but you have other options as to how you and your customers pay the sales tax.
Sales tax means that you will most likely never have the extremely high traffic vendors in your city, sorry.
An extremely good suit of composite is going to cost over 300K. 5% sales tax means that the customer will be paying 315,000. Meanwhile, the competition isn't in a city, and your customer buys from them. And for those of you who suggest that the merchant price his items down to the point where the sales tax is included, and the price to the consumer is still 300K, think again. What you are asking is for high-end merchants to basically fund the city out of their own pocket. Not going to happen.
I have had quite a number of sales > 1million credits. My customers have come to expect a flat price of 4 cpu for our resources. I will NOT move my vendors into a city with a sales tax. And my high-end crafting customers are unanimous in feeling the same way.
A city has to offer something to merchants in order to be able to justify sales taxes. There are only two things they can possibly offer: shuttle service to within short walking distance of your vendor, and the "experiementation" and "assembly" bonuses that will be possible in a few weeks. With mounts, and soon speeders, shuttle service is worth very little. Experimentation bonuses, while nice, will not justify a 5% sales tax. For one thing, my resources get NOTHING from this. And all of the high-end crafters I have polled have told me that this small increase in experimentation is really not going to benefit their business either.
Meanwhile, to get the crafter bonuses for your city, you are going to have to pay an additional 300K a week in city maintenance (or very close to that figure). The maintenance fees for cities are just insane, as most mayors are beginning to find out. A cloning center, I believe, costs the city 80,000 credits a week. That means that, in order to be self-supporting, 80 people a week will have to clone there.
Cities are nice for the "coolness" factor, but as a "mecca" for artisans and crafters, they really don't offer anything worth paying a sales tax for (or even citizenship tax/property tax, for that matter). My vendors will remain outside Theed, and outside any city for now. I refuse to subsidize a city government, it's services, and all the non-merchants taking advantage of those services, at the expense of either my business or my customers.
Lower your prices 5%?, that way you are taking the tax onto yourself, customer is paying what he would as if no taxes.
When the city reaches level 3, and your politicion gets the skills, he can add to basic assembly bonus, and next box add to expierment success bonus. Now you have a potential less cost to you because of less critical fails, and also have the ability to make a superior produce compared to someone not in a city with the same ammunities.
This whole thread seems silly to me.
City upkeep being what it is, someone needs to pay it. Right now, I'M paying my city's upkeep by throwing 50k in the treasury every week.
The complaint that merchants sell something for 100k, then at 5%, customers end up paying 105k, so they're losing sales to competition is ridiculous. Charge 95k, then your tax takes you to under 100k total. At 1%, the average city would need to sell 3.5 MILLION credits worth of stuff a week. I don't know about you, I'm a pretty successful architect, and I don't make nearly that per week.
The idea that cities are gimmicks, and don't offer anything to craftsmen and artisans is also false. For any community, the idea of community needs to supersede self-interest. I am setting up a shop that only citizens can enter, and charging lower rates for raw materials and power and houses and such. No, I can't keep them from turning around and selling those items to someone else for a higher rate, but hopefully my citizens will view it as a way for them to take those raw materials and turn them into profit by crafting with them.
Cities in SWG are going to have the same problems as cities anywhere in the world. Location matters, taxes matter, the people matter, proximity matters, city loyalty matters. Yes, you can buy something from a major record store chain, or you can pay a dollar more and buy it from the guy who owns a record shop on the corner. Supporting your community needs to matter to your citizens, and to you. If it doesn't, then don't belong to a city.
I live in NYC, all the way downtown. Why? Because my community needed and needs me to help rebuild. I shop down here, I live down here, and if it costs me a little more, then it does. I could live anywhere else in the world...pay less on rent, food...but I want to live here. My friends are here, and I was born near here.
Why should SWG work any differently?
The idea that offers should not be subject to tax...interesting. If you run a business, why shouldn't you pay tax for items you buy? Unless you're only purchasing with the intent of resale. Perhaps tax should only be charged when an item is removed from a vendor. Doesn't solve your accidental sale problem...but it should help businesses that intend to resell pass the sales tax onto the end purchaser, rather than pay tax, then have it incrementally taxed. Not a bad idea.
Xao
Solaris, Tatooine - Tarquinas
Y'all merchant and crafters may be able to be offended by this now, andlaugh in the faces of the politicians and all, being offended byt this deplorable sales tax (*sigh* drama queens .. .j/kbut the tide is turning fast and you cannot stop it.
A city does not fund itself. Cannot fund itself, City Hall can't take gnort missions adn City Hall didnt get ANY melons!!! But, you crafters and offended merchantds fail to realize is that the player base is shifting. You usta be able to maintain a healhy business ouside of Theed, becasue ppl had no choice BUT to run. There are no NPC/PC vendors in ANY NPC city.
That is what is changing. From Laereth, you will get mission terminals, a bank, med center, shuttle, cloning facility. Why do I need to travel to Theed to pay 3K less for a mineral harvestor now when a merchant has his vendor set up 200m away from where I am now? No need, cuz the trip will cost me double what I expect to save by shopping "outside" of town and lets not count the time in-game for four shuttle trips. And desides, if I am a member of the community, why I offended that some of my money is going to directly fund the infrastrucutre that allows me more time, freedom and felxibility in game?!?!!!
I am speaking to this from two vantage points that I ahve the luxury of having. An active Mayor of a large Imp city and a Master DE, who is doing active business on a vendor in the villiage limits. I see both sides and it is easily worth my while to offer the best products I can to the population I serve, both as polkitician and MDE. And with ANY crafted profession, tell me the market is SO cut throut that 3-5% in a price increase on a product takes you out of a market and I'll call ya dillusional.
The only ones who will dictate wether sales tax is too high or just right are the customers, not the vendors. As vendors, we havfe no real power. By saying I am not selling in town is not to dis the politician running the city, it is to tell the customers that they can't make a decision to buy your product.
LOL!!! This has been a hotley debated topic for us (SoL) as well, so I ahve had some time to be with this. In the long run, from a crafters standpoint, we wont win, the tax will go in and ppl will buy goods from those whoa re closest and offer grea5t customer service.
Have to put my 2 cents in.....
If the crafters and merchants don't pay the maint. on the city who will?Possiblyyou will make enough on the cloning center and shuttle port to pay the maint. on our city. Maybe but in furhter review why in the world would I want to visit your city? Imean really how many Medium Naboo houses must we see? Cities offer no compelling reason to visit them exceptcrafters/merchants and since player cities wont have star ports I have to make a hop toTheed or some otherStarPort city anyway toget to your dusty little town. So to meits rather clear you going to have 2kinds or player cities.
1) Guild sponsorded city with 20-80 citizens that absolutly no one ever goes to except the 20-80 citizens that live there.
2) CraftingCity's that have multiple "Premier" crafters on your server.
I have a armor shop on Ahazi and have been a Armorsmith since day one. We have a 5% sales tax in our little city and depending on how much I play I do between 500,000 and 2 million a week in revenue. Since I do various "Special Projects" for people price is rarely a issue and I have not heard a single complaint about our 5% sales tax.
So to me the question becomes this. Why as a crafter do I want to join "xyz city?" The 15% experminitation can be significant but I suspect most of the cities will have it, so what will give your city the edge? I know for a fact if I dropped my house outside of Theed on the no-build boarder I would sell more stuff so sales is not the factor. I think all the Mayors and SWG in general had better start thinking hard about this otherwise player cities will just become another money sink for rich players to show off how much crap they could accumulate. Now instead of kryat perls/kryat tisse....etc. you can have your own city hall/cantina/hospital/whatever. But this my friend is not going to make a player city its going to be your own little compound. Anyway just my 2 cents.
If for some reason the vendor wants the consumers to pay the tax, then he/she can raise the prices to reflect the taxes they will be paying. When I tell someone that my Adv Comp costs 250k, they expect to pay 250k. They don't expect to pay a tax on top of that.
That would mean that if someone orders a custom colored armor for me and I trade it to them and they pay me, then they are getting a discount from the people paying on vendors.
It shouldn't work like that. Yes here in North America the ticket price is always without tax but go to Europe and look at the prices. All sales include tax. I think this is how the sales tax should work.
And oh yeah, offers to vendors should be tax free as well.
The benefit of a city to merchants is the centralization of goods and services. It's easier to get customers in a heavily trafficked area than anywhere else outside a city. Player cities will draw people. People spend money. The opportunity to get more people to spend money is worth paying taxes for. However, there is some truth to the idea that it seems like merchants will be paying for the city. Consdier this though: sales tax is only one of the taxes that can be applied. Building taxes are there too, as well as income taxes and shuttle taxes.
I've found that the best way to not piss anyone off and give people who want to a chance to contribute is to run taxes extremely low and live off of donations. We have 2 million in the city fund right now, all thanks to various donations from rich benefactors with no use for their money. 10k here, 20k there, it all adds up. We'll be running at bare minimum taxes for a long time to come.
mayor pash aylor, valshara, naboo, valcyn