Taxing Religions/Secret Societies

[Silverhawk]

but you hoard the gold to expand the temple, no?

yes, and you will have to pay for it. Either you keep it on elders/priests or you store it in the temple, taxes are paid.

[fodder]

errr... why not? That exactly is the idea. The local carpenters, bricklayers and other workers won't exactly accept an "I have that gold three realms away somewhere".

but they accept that line for upkeeps paid from global treasury? albeit at inflated rate? granted hundreds of gold and a few tens are somewhat different.

point is.. what is the function of keeping money in temple?
maintenance
construction
banking for religious purposes (priests go around preaching with gold, etc)
banking for handy money

banking for plain old nobles is the "bad" thing? so find a way to make other bits more interesting?

[Thunthorn]

If you want to prevent temples being used as banks, then tax gold withdrawn from templetreasurys rather than the treasurys themselves. Either by the local lord or the temple itself. If the religion gets to keep 250 of the 500 gold I have stored in a temple when I want to withdraw it I can guarantee that the days of temples being used as banks will be over. Without making funding temples harder...

[Tom]

but they accept that line for upkeeps paid from global treasury? albeit at inflated rate? granted hundreds of gold and a few tens are somewhat different.

Exactly. Travelling every once in a while over a large distance with a huge amount of gold, with the risk of having it stolen, is interesting gameplay.

Travelling around all the time with a few tens of gold is boring !@#$.

That's why upkeep gold can be sent via NPC couriers, merchants, pilgrims, whatever. But the massive amounts required for enlarging a temple can not.

[Chenier]

The Catholic church was a dirt poor persecuted Jewish Sect until they got some nice Roman imperial backing, with all the wealth and resources that entails. Even at the height of its power, those of the priestly order that relied on peasant tithes for income, where generally as poor and down trodden as their parishioners. You don't hear about fabulously wealth village preachers much.

At higher levels, where the priest could be expected to have the patronage of one of more noble families, then we are talking about wealth generation. While each parish did send back some income to the next chain in the hierarchy, most of the village parishes had enough trouble ensuring that the tithes keep the poor village priest from starvation. Towns would have done relatively better in this regard.

Alot more wealth was gathered by selling positions like Bishop to the highest bidder from noble families, indulgences to wash away the sins of the rich, and the ever popular bequests of land when a noble died. I'm not saying the tithes didn't generate an income mind you, but the income the catholic church earned was never mostly based on it and like most things a great deal of the wealth was build of existing wealth.

By evolution, I meant post roman collapse.

[Chenier]

Exactly. Travelling every once in a while over a large distance with a huge amount of gold, with the risk of having it stolen, is interesting gameplay.

Travelling around all the time with a few tens of gold is boring !@#$.

That's why upkeep gold can be sent via NPC couriers, merchants, pilgrims, whatever. But the massive amounts required for enlarging a temple can not.

I've never found traveling great distances to be of any interest whatsoever, quite the contrary actually. And as long as you don't go in enemy lands (if your realm has any enemies at all), you are pretty much as safe as it goes for that gold of yours that you are transporting. Traveling was always considered a necessary evil, which I did reluctantly in most cases because I had to.

Furthermore, religions were tax havens, yea... but this is also what allowed to stockpile gold in order to build or enlarge temples. In most active religions, if a lord would stockpile a ton of gold for personal reasons, he'd have a high risk of seeing that gold just grabbed from under his nose by the religion leaders for other purposes. How are we going to finance these large temples, now? We are going to have their duke tax the money they are giving themselves, therefore giving them a ridiculously high balance? Much higher than what they actually gave, therefore allowing them to go in other temples to withdraw more gold than they ever actually contributed? All lords will be able to do this, but the scale at which the big cities will be able to do this is way beyond the religions' capacity to pay. It'll simply make them go bankrupt. Religions require much more massive investments than guilds do.

[Indirik]

If you wan't to prevent temples being used as banks, then tax gold withdrawn from templetreasurys rather than the treasurys themselves. Either by the local lord or the temple itself. If the religion gets to keep 250 of the 500 gold I have stored in a temple when I want to withdraw it I can guarantee that the days of temples being used as banks will be over. Without making funding temples harder...

And thus completely kill any possibility of religious crusades, which often rely on temple treasuries to fund the crusaders.

[Indirik]

a) change the tax amounts - half taxes for guilds, and quarter taxes for temples. I could also add a "tax free" minimum amount, maybe 10-50 gold per size. That would give the temple some amount to cover regular expenses with that is not taxed.

A possible addition to this is a minimum local treasury balance for taking gold out of the temple. For example, if the balance in the local treasury was below, say, 50 gold, then no one could withdraw gold from that temple. In this way, you wouldn't have to worry about some random, anonymous person coming along and emptying the treasury, requiring someone to make a special trip out to restock it. To compensate for the various expenditures of different size temples, make the amount vary based on temple size. Say, 20 gold per size.

[JPierreD]

And thus completely kill any possibility of religious crusades, which often rely on temple treasuries to fund the crusaders.

I actually liked the idea you quoted, and have two answers for you:

1) Is banking not the issue? Thus, financing religious crusades avoiding Banks?

2) If the Lord of the region your crusaders draw from is a believer, then you can still do it. He will simply collect the taxes and deposit them in the temple again, for the crusaders to draw on. It would even create some nice possibilities of conflict, with the Lord sending back all, part or none of the money deposited. Corrupt local lords profiting on devout foreigners? Crusaders having things more difficult by avoiding the normal legal banking system? All very good to me. What do you think about it?

Summing it up, you would have no tax in depositing into Temples and Guilds, but you would have one on anything you draw from them. It would solve the Banking issues, not contributing to the temple/guild maintenance ones.
Want to fund a crusade? Be ready to entrust and severely empower the local lords you will depend on. If you do not, you are just circumventing the existing banking limitations unpunished.

[Indirik]

I actually liked the idea you quoted, and have two answers for you:

1) Is banking not the issue? Thus, financing religious crusades avoiding Banks?

I have no idea what this statement means.

2) If the Lord of the region your crusaders draw from is a believer, then you can still do it. He will simply collect the taxes and deposit them in the temple again, for the crusaders to draw on. It would even create some nice possibilities of conflict, with the Lord sending back all, part or none of the money deposited. Corrupt local lords profiting on devout foreigners? Crusaders having things more difficult by avoiding the normal legal banking system? All very good to me. What do you think about it?

It also does nothing at all to prevent the most egregious problem of guilds/religions as banks, which is the lord being the one doing the banking. The money taxed form the withdraw is then handed to the person doing the sheltering. And in the process you screw over the people taking gold out for perfectly legitimate reasons, by giving them much less of what they are due.

[Thunthorn]

And thus completely kill any possibility of religious crusades, which often rely on temple treasuries to fund the crusaders.

Or you could make declaring a crusade an ingame action that could be made by the leadership of the religion during which people could withdraw money for free.

Either using temples as banks is a problem and then it should be dealt with in a way that doesn't hurt the economy of the religion, or it is not and we can keep things the way it is...

[Gustav Kuriga]

Either using temples as banks is a problem and then it should be dealt with in a way that doesn't hurt the economy of the religion, or it is not and we can keep things the way it is...

This. I don't see using religions as banks to be a problem, because unlike what we had in Dwilight recently with the family gold being misused, no new wealth is created. It is merely existing wealth being moved in order to prevent its loss, which is something I feel every noble would want. After all, the more gold you have, the more you can use it on. And if the elders decide to take that pretty stockpile of gold and use it for something else, that's the risk you take.

[Vellos]

a) change the tax amounts - half taxes for guilds, and quarter taxes for temples. I could also add a "tax free" minimum amount, maybe 10-50 gold per size. That would give the temple some amount to cover regular expenses with that is not taxed.

b) change the tax type - I could store the amount of gold put into the treasury between tax days, and tax only that, i.e. turn it into an income tax. This would also reduce the lord = massive balance problem a little, but it would reduce income through guildhouses dramatically.

These are both good ideas. A "tax free" amount would be nice. But 10-50 is nothing for even a moderately sized guildhouse or temple. It should be based on the size of the temple. For a level 5, I would say 100-200 is a reasonable sum to have tax-free.

The change to tax on income is also a very good idea. It preserves the ability of religions to stockpile cash, while limits the banking. I believe it should still be at a tax-preferred rate (maybe half or a quarter of the local rate), but it should happen. You could process it either during the transaction or weekly, I don't know which would be easier. But this is an excellent idea.

[Gustav Kuriga]

These are both good ideas. A "tax free" amount would be nice. But 10-50 is nothing for even a moderately sized guildhouse or temple. It should be based on the size of the temple. For a level 5, I would say 100-200 is a reasonable sum to have tax-free.

The change to tax on income is also a very good idea. It preserves the ability of religions to stockpile cash, while limits the banking. I believe it should still be at a tax-preferred rate (maybe half or a quarter of the local rate), but it should happen. You could process it either during the transaction or weekly, I don't know which would be easier. But this is an excellent idea.

He said 10-50 gold per size. Just so you know.

[Bedwyr]

a) change the tax amounts - half taxes for guilds, and quarter taxes for temples. I could also add a "tax free" minimum amount, maybe 10-50 gold per size. That would give the temple some amount to cover regular expenses with that is not taxed.

b) change the tax type - I could store the amount of gold put into the treasury between tax days, and tax only that, i.e. turn it into an income tax. This would also reduce the lord = massive balance problem a little, but it would reduce income through guildhouses dramatically.

Either one of these would solve most if not all of the problems I see with taxing religions.  My personal preference would be option a), but I think either would work just fine.