Politician Archive
Thread: Why dont mayors uses taxes to fund cities?
I went back through the town expenditures and counted up all the lamps and parks, etc (basically all the stuff that has fixed costs and found that what the terminal says we were spending and what I cam up with were pretty much on par, which tells me that income & property taxes were being collected as they were supposed to be.
Actually, now that I see some contrdicting statements arising about wether these taxes work or not, it seems thats a basis for the aversion to taxes (it seems there is a tacit assumption that taxation is broken PERIOD)
Not counting variable taxes (shuttle, garage, & cloning fees), it should be possible to calculate the EXACT numbers you need for funding your city via taxes. We know how much every civic structure costs the treasury, we can count the number and types of player structures in the city, and caluculate the % based off the maintance rates for the structure. No guess work there.
SO I am hearing two things, taxes are broken almost across the board, and taxes are working fine (excluding the sales tax)
I am not very concerned about the shuttle fee issue (or any of the variable fees for that matter), just the fixed cost civic structures (like clone center, city hall, gardens, lamps, garage, etc). I figure if the base fixed costs of the buildings are covered, any fees from the garage/clone center/shuttle are gravy.
Property tax:
I went thru the city, counting every house of each type, every PA hall, cantina, med center, harvester, factory, and looked up their base maintenance rates, then added the property tax % on and calculated the sum of all the potential property tax being generated by those structures.
Income Tax:
Since the city cycles once a week, the income tax draw is the same every week (+/- citizens). The day the city cycles is what ius variable I belive, based on the FAQs, as such is not variable based on indvidual citizens from the same city). Ill have to scan the issues thread to see if this is called out in any detail. In this case I took the current income tax (1000cr) and x the # of citizens.
City Maintenance Costs
I added up all the civic structures, the parks, gardens, shuttles, lamps, clone center, and the city hall based on our ranking, garages, trainers, all that jazz, and came up with what the fixed costs per week are.
Cash Outlay vs Income
I then looked at the City management terminal to get the total cash draw from the treasury and compared the number with the sum of the Property Tax figure and the Income Tax figure and started comparing the inflow to the outflow and saw that the city was deducting the proper amounts from the treasury for maintenance.
As far as the city income, I watched the city for 4 cycles, I made note of the treasury levels at the end and beginning of each cycle and compared the outflow to the potential inflow and found that yes the numebrs did not match but the variable funds generated by the shuttle/clone center/garage could account for the discrepancy.
bottom line was it sure looked like the Property & Income taxes were being put into the treasury as designed which leads me to belive a fully tax funded city is not only possible but not hard to do at all, even at the metro level.
Other Possible Discrepancies
I know of the dual-citzenship exploits, as well as exploits with 'ghost' citizens where they drop houses then delete the character but still count as citizens. I suppose if there were enough of these in a town, it could cause tax collection to break (how do you collect income tax off a player that no longer exists?)
Anyone out there running a new town (aka founded within the last couple of months) able to confirm or deny that your city is getting all the tax revenue is being collected properly?
KJFett wrote:
Why bother running a city off of taxes? I run off donations and I dont have to trim back. I have max gardens, max lights, etc, etc. My city center...even in the night is bright as day from all the lights. All because I cut taxes and said "Now we play by donations. Donate what you can." I make way more off even the new players than those that run by the taxes alone. Does a smaller few bear the greater burden on the city? Yes. But that is what they wish so that they can live in a city that looks nice and the mayor isnt having to trim out the fat. Will I ever run a budget in the positive? No. But Im not in the money making biz. I should NEVER make more than I spend. It's the people's city. It's the people's money. Not mine.
Congratulations, good for you, bravo, etc. etc. etc....
Not every mayor is as fortunate as you are. Some of us have to depend on taxes because our citizens are either poor or because no one wants to donate. Believe me, if I had enough citizens step forward and make enough contributions to where I could max out everything in my city, I would. Unfortunately, I do not. And considering that my city has been suffering from a recent breakout of inactivity, taxes are about my only salvation for keeping what I have in the city.
Plus, there are those of us out there who actually want to run a city on taxes. There seems to be a rather popular belief that it is impossible for a city to be run on taxes. It can be rather fun to show those people otherwise. Even still, I haven't had any complaints from citizens about not having enough gardens and whatnot. Sure, the majority of them would lvoe to have them, but I have also explained to them that our city is run on taxes and that I will place things as we can afford them. If they want something before that time, they can either donate or sponsor what is placed. So far, no complaints.
Personally, I am against running a city off of donations. I feel it creates an unfair balance. The good people who donate end up always donating and the people who never donate probably never will. I feel that is unfair to the people who do donate. Taxes at least force everyone to pay into the city treasury. Just my opinion though.
BUT
I like the whole city planning thing because civil engineering is of great interest to me, as such, so is the challenge of building a city soley on funds generated by the tax system.
I consider this the pinnacle of Politician because in order to get your civil engineering vision implemented, you have to convince citizens its the right thing to do, and go along with it as you build. (its like a mini-version of Sim City built into SWG). Cnt make them cranky or they leave or worse, toss you out of office. (the Political aspect of the deal)
I think a lot of politcians do the job simply as a sideline, as a means to get the basic stuff their guild needs/wants so they arent dependant on a NPC city for all that, plus they get to customize it all.
To me thats ok, but I consider it to be only the basic level of what Politician is about
To me the 'brass ring' of politician is to design a city and a oeprating plan from the ground up and grow the city from an Outpost to a Metropolis, depending ONLY on taxes, at the same time allowing the citizens of the city an equal opportunity to decide how the city should grow.
Anyone can stuff credits into a box and call themselves Mayor, but there is a reason r/l Mayors tend to have degrees in Civil Engineering and a strong background in Communications & Civics.
I recognize the appeal of this is limited, but I am not looking to gain Metro status by the end of the week either.
I know there are a handful of Mayors out there that realize the Civil Engineering and Civics aspects of being a Mayor and play them but I know they are the minority. Hopefully I can find a nice, small core of like minded folks to inhabit my city and pick up the Mayorship someday.
Kinshi wrote:
Well, yes I concede that it is easier to simply feed the city credits via donations and be done with it
BUT
I like the whole city planning thing because civil engineering is of great interest to me, as such, so is the challenge of building a city soley on funds generated by the tax system.
I consider this the pinnacle of Politician because in order to get your civil engineering vision implemented, you have to convince citizens its the right thing to do, and go along with it as you build. (its like a mini-version of Sim City built into SWG). Cnt make them cranky or they leave or worse, toss you out of office. (the Political aspect of the deal)
I think a lot of politcians do the job simply as a sideline, as a means to get the basic stuff their guild needs/wants so they arent dependant on a NPC city for all that, plus they get to customize it all.
To me thats ok, but I consider it to be only the basic level of what Politician is about
To me the 'brass ring' of politician is to design a city and a oeprating plan from the ground up and grow the city from an Outpost to a Metropolis, depending ONLY on taxes, at the same time allowing the citizens of the city an equal opportunity to decide how the city should grow.
Anyone can stuff credits into a box and call themselves Mayor, but there is a reason r/l Mayors tend to have degrees in Civil Engineering and a strong background in Communications & Civics.
I recognize the appeal of this is limited, but I am not looking to gain Metro status by the end of the week either.
I know there are a handful of Mayors out there that realize the Civil Engineering and Civics aspects of being a Mayor and play them but I know they are the minority. Hopefully I can find a nice, small core of like minded folks to inhabit my city and pick up the Mayorship someday.
Ahhhh, finally someone I can relate to when it comes to being a Politician.
Very well said.
Curious, I know you lostthe election in your cityfrom one of your other threads, but are you planning on starting your own city or running for mayor in another city??? You seem to have a passion for Politician that not many can match.
If your can't seem to get things going on your server, see me on Starsider. I might have a business proposition for you (a mayoral role of course) depending on how things go for me in the next couple of weeks. Don't worry, I'm not trying to steal you away, just saying that if things don't work out for ya, we can find you a nice little home on Starsider as a mayor perhaps. Send me a PM if you are interested or want to discuss a few things.
Well yes I did lose the election, and my current plans involve establishing a new outpost (been giving a LOT of thought on how I want to launch into this) - it was quite the election too, its not an easy sell to try and bring these ideas to an established metropolis funded 99% by the donation system. (But I got votes :-), so I gained a few boxes of Poli XP as a result )
ill shoot you a message, thanks
yoda101705 wrote:
KJFett wrote:
Why bother running a city off of taxes? I run off donations and I dont have to trim back. I have max gardens, max lights, etc, etc. My city center...even in the night is bright as day from all the lights. All because I cut taxes and said "Now we play by donations. Donate what you can." I make way more off even the new players than those that run by the taxes alone. Does a smaller few bear the greater burden on the city? Yes. But that is what they wish so that they can live in a city that looks nice and the mayor isnt having to trim out the fat. Will I ever run a budget in the positive? No. But Im not in the money making biz. I should NEVER make more than I spend. It's the people's city. It's the people's money. Not mine.
Congratulations, good for you, bravo, etc. etc. etc....
Not every mayor is as fortunate as you are. Some of us have to depend on taxes because our citizens are either poor or because no one wants to donate. Believe me, if I had enough citizens step forward and make enough contributions to where I could max out everything in my city, I would. Unfortunately, I do not. And considering that my city has been suffering from a recent breakout of inactivity, taxes are about my only salvation for keeping what I have in the city.
Plus, there are those of us out there who actually want to run a city on taxes. There seems to be a rather popular belief that it is impossible for a city to be run on taxes. It can be rather fun to show those people otherwise. Even still, I haven't had any complaints from citizens about not having enough gardens and whatnot. Sure, the majority of them would lvoe to have them, but I have also explained to them that our city is run on taxes and that I will place things as we can afford them. If they want something before that time, they can either donate or sponsor what is placed. So far, no complaints.
Personally, I am against running a city off of donations. I feel it creates an unfair balance. The good people who donate end up always donating and the people who never donate probably never will. I feel that is unfair to the people who do donate. Taxes at least force everyone to pay into the city treasury. Just my opinion though.
HELLO!!! Read the title of the post! He asked why mayors dont use taxes to fund their cities. I answered him. You want to be against donation funding on cities...then dont do it. No one makes you take donations.
Thereare a number of people that think that you are only really "running"the city if it is all on taxes, and want to go beyond that and in some posts..not the one above....even recommend that donations be removed or gated. WHY? Do you see me making posts that taxes should be removed? Do any of us mayors that run on donations post that taxes should be removed? They are there and if mayors want to use them...good for them, but why the other side feels they must look down on us "donation mayors" baffles me.
There is NOTHING unfair about it. ALL my citizens know what the budget is. I make sure that I send out emails to let them know. They know full well that when they give 2Mil for the city, (top donation so far is 25Mil btw) that it is covering a couple weeks. The ones that give 100K know they are making a small difference...even the guys donating 10K know that they are taking care of some of the trainers or the lights. None of them know what they others gave..they just know the city runs and needs what they can give.
Kinshi wrote:
Well, yes I concede that it is easier to simply feed the city credits via donations and be done with it
BUT
I like the whole city planning thing because civil engineering is of great interest to me, as such, so is the challenge of building a city soley on funds generated by the tax system.
I consider this the pinnacle of Politician because in order to get your civil engineering vision implemented, you have to convince citizens its the right thing to do, and go along with it as you build. (its like a mini-version of Sim City built into SWG). Cnt make them cranky or they leave or worse, toss you out of office. (the Political aspect of the deal)
I think a lot of politcians do the job simply as a sideline, as a means to get the basic stuff their guild needs/wants so they arent dependant on a NPC city for all that, plus they get to customize it all.
To me thats ok, but I consider it to be only the basic level of what Politician is about
To me the 'brass ring' of politician is to design a city and a oeprating plan from the ground up and grow the city from an Outpost to a Metropolis, depending ONLY on taxes, at the same time allowing the citizens of the city an equal opportunity to decide how the city should grow.
Anyone can stuff credits into a box and call themselves Mayor, but there is a reason r/l Mayors tend to have degrees in Civil Engineering and a strong background in Communications & Civics.
I recognize the appeal of this is limited, but I am not looking to gain Metro status by the end of the week either.
I know there are a handful of Mayors out there that realize the Civil Engineering and Civics aspects of being a Mayor and play them but I know they are the minority. Hopefully I can find a nice, small core of like minded folks to inhabit my city and pick up the Mayorship someday.
Easy? who gave you the idea that donation cities where easy? I have to work to get that money. Do you think they just line up to drop it in a box and smiley as they give the credits to the city? You tax mayors have it easy. We have to actively make sure that credits are rolling. Sure I get big donations...I mentioned earlier that 25Mil was my top so far. He didnt just wake up one day and decide to do that. I have to make my city look like a city, function like a city...make them feel at home when they are in the city. I have to communicate, wave at people, say "hi", chat as they wait for the shuttle, ask how things are going when I see them out and about on another planet. I have to be fast to respond on issues. I have to be smart in what changes I make and sometimes turn down chances that other mayors would die for to make sure the city maintains the feel that makes the citizens happy. All while convincing people that they should give. It is in no way easy. It is time consuming. It means getting buffed to grind and 30 minutes later going back to town to deal with an issue (yes, dealing with issues via /tell isnt a way to win citizens).
Be into civil engineering all you want. Turn you city into your own utopia. Thats what the game is all about! We all get to do it....not Kinshi's way...not Thunderheart's way....not Karlton's way....we get to do it each our own way, and each way is right! Demanding that features be removed because you dont like them is silly. Saying someone is doing it all wrong because it isnt your way is narrowminded. Read back through the posts. I make it clear that we all get to do it our way. I like my way, but Im not about to impose my ways on you by suggesting that features you use to run your city are not the"real" way to run a city.
Though I dont think the devs went to all the trouble of making a tax system, only to have it not used (Cities are expensive, and that is quite a load for a handful of donors to have to bear, especially at Metro size with lots of city perks)
The fact remains that the burden is small when the load is distrubuted across many rather than having the burden sholdered by just a few.
Yes I asked why the tax system is not used, and it seems there is a discrepancy of viewpoints. I hear taxes are broken across the board, and I hear taxes are mostly working as expected. SO if taxes are not as broken as people think, the only real reason why mayors arent using it, simply because they choose not to for whatever reason, but whatever the reason its not becuase the tax system is broken to the point a city cant live off of it.
And thats what I am getting at, is that its really more a myth that taxes wont fund a city and its a myth that taxes will bankrupt poor players. I troled the issues threads of both the Politician forums and the Cities and Housing, and while I find a few year old references to taxes not being deducted, I see as many people saying it works fine, and I dont see the reported issues about income/property taxes as VERIFIED by anyone specifically, and my own observations bear out that income & property taxes are in fact working like they should.
Yes there may be some issues that may have arisen from bad patches or server crashes (It would not suprise me that last year w/ the servers going down every night , that it was likely that was screwing with city cycles. but that was then and this is now, and the servers stay up a helluva lot longer than they ever did before, which could only help the city cycles work they way they are supposed to.
AT anyrate Ill be putting up a outpost shortly and while the city is small and I still have a direct hand into growth, I will be watching the treasury like a hawk and crunching numbers as time goes on to see just how well the tax system actually is working.
hehe this tax thing I think owuld make for a good episode of "Mythbusters"
anyway Ill be posting my findings as the city grows, because if people are avoiding the tax system because they think its busted, then its best for us all to either prove its busted or prove it works and not depend on hearsay.
Kinshi wrote:
Well everyone can run their cities the way they see fit, no argument there.
Though I dont think the devs went to all the trouble of making a tax system, only to have it not used (Cities are expensive, and that is quite a load for a handful of donors to have to bear, especially at Metro size with lots of city perks)
The fact remains that the burden is small when the load is distrubuted across many rather than having the burden sholdered by just a few.
Yes I asked why the tax system is not used, and it seems there is a discrepancy of viewpoints. I hear taxes are broken across the board, and I hear taxes are mostly working as expected. SO if taxes are not as broken as people think, the only real reason why mayors arent using it, simply because they choose not to for whatever reason, but whatever the reason its not becuase the tax system is broken to the point a city cant live off of it.
And thats what I am getting at, is that its really more a myth that taxes wont fund a city and its a myth that taxes will bankrupt poor players. I troled the issues threads of both the Politician forums and the Cities and Housing, and while I find a few year old references to taxes not being deducted, I see as many people saying it works fine, and I dont see the reported issues about income/property taxes as VERIFIED by anyone specifically, and my own observations bear out that income & property taxes are in fact working like they should.
Yes there may be some issues that may have arisen from bad patches or server crashes (It would not suprise me that last year w/ the servers going down every night , that it was likely that was screwing with city cycles. but that was then and this is now, and the servers stay up a helluva lot longer than they ever did before, which could only help the city cycles work they way they are supposed to.
AT anyrate Ill be putting up a outpost shortly and while the city is small and I still have a direct hand into growth, I will be watching the treasury like a hawk and crunching numbers as time goes on to see just how well the tax system actually is working.
hehe this tax thing I think owuld make for a good episode of "Mythbusters"
anyway Ill be posting my findings as the city grows, because if people are avoiding the tax system because they think its busted, then its best for us all to either prove its busted or prove it works and not depend on hearsay.
Well said.
I think part of the myth about taxes not actually working goes back to the fact that just about every tax has gone through a time period where they did not work. As we all know, the sales tax does not currently work at anything but 10%. The shuttle tax keeps resetting back to 100 credits (last I knew). Back in January, the property tax didn't work. The devs changed the maintenance rules for player structures and for a time it didn't work right and no maintenance was actually deducted from structures. The result was that since nothing was being drawn out of the structures, the property taxe didn't work.
There have been bugs off and onwith the taxes. Some of these get fixed and some just stay broken. The problem is that as the taxes get fixed (or broken), people seem to not realize it. One city I helped run had an 8% sales tax, but it took us about two months to realize that they weren't even benefitting the city. Donation funded cities would be cities that really wouldn't notice a working tax from a broken one (not pointing fingers, just pointing out something). They don't use taxes, so odds are they wouldn't notice the tax being fixed unless they visit the forums here often, read patch notes, or switched over to a tax run city(or another source that would allow them to learn so).
Fact is, all the taxes work... just some of them in very wierd ways (not like they're supposed to). Property tax works, but it has been reported that it doesn't always take the credits out of an account. Income tax takes out credits at different intervals through the week. Sales tax only works at 10%. Shuttle tax can be set at something higher than 100 credits, but seems to get reset back to 100 after a server reset. They all work... just in varying degrees.
The most reliable taxes are definitely the income tax, property tax, and garage tax (haven't heard anything wrong with this one yet). Yeah, income and property taxes pull things a bit wierd, but they do work. In the end, it's a jumbled mess because the devs don't want to fix the taxes (however hard or simple it may be). One can only hope that after the CU, the devs will take some time to address some of the issues Politicians have about the profession and cities.
At any rate, managing a city's taxes is a tough task. It does take a bit of time and effort to make sure the taxes are working right and that they are functioning in a way to help your city. Hopefully the devs will take some time to help out Politicians by expanding the tax system, fixing the problems with it, and even adding more functionality to city terminals to help sort out taxes (without the need of third party software to do so).
As for Mythbusters..... would definitely make for an interesting thread, not only for the Politician forum but for the rest of the game as well. 
I did the math, and the property taxes, even at 18% come out to the change you find in your couch cushions (basically only 69cr a day more than your base maintenance.
So where does everyone get this idea that city taxes will make you go broke? Is this some holdover from when SWG was young and credits were hard to get?
This baffles me, because what we have instead is small numbers of people pouring in large gobs of cash, while the rest sorta live off that.
Are people really so broke they cant handle 69cr a day more than the base maintenance of a small house? How is that possible when even noob level missions give 1-4k rewards each? Or are large #'s of people really so cheap that theyd rather live alone in the desert than pay taxes? The math simply does not bear out this mantra that city taxes are oppressive.
(property taxes are based off the base maintenance rate of a structure, so a small house has a base daily rate of 384cd/day, add +18% property tax and that is +69cr, for a grand total of 453cr/day in maintenance. Thats oppressive? I have met people that patently say "ill move out if you raise my taxes, when their taxes are 0%.
I just dont get that, especially when the same people wont blink an eye at spending 250k in one shot for a case of Vasarian Brandy or some silly loot part.
I dont get it, can some one enlighten me as to why so many react so badly to the tax system? (is this some kind of R/L backlash filtering into the game, some IRS bashing or something?)
As a mayor starting out, I dont want to create a 'welfare city'. I dont want to attact citizens by paying all the costs for them myself. I approach Politician and player cities as a civil engineering project and the cost of raising the city needs to be distrubuted so the every pays a little rather than a cpl paying a LOT.
discuss pls