Tax Family Wealth

[Tom]

Title:
Tax Family Wealth

Summary:
As outlined in this FR, the family wealth top list has become useless because everyone has the max amount.

To fix that, "tax" excessive family wealth so only those who can really afford it by regular contributions stay in the top list.


Details:
There needs to be a "tax free" amount or players might stop bothering with family wealth at all. And taxes would need to increase the more you have.

Proposal:
< 10,000 = no tax
beyond 10,000: Tax 1% per 1k per month.

Code: [Select]

$tax = max(0,floor( ($FamilyWealth-10000)/100));


Benefits:

• money drain for a game that has way too much gold in it
• creates competition among the wealthy
• family wealth means something again
• inactive or lethargic families will drop off the top list

Possible Downsides/Exploits:
the rich will hate it, like they always hate taxation
some people might complain that once they got it, the game shouldn't take it away.

[Anaris]

I don't think this is the answer. I think we just need to come up with some new options that use vast amounts of family wealth.

[vonGenf]

I don't really mind this, but I don't think it is necessary. I don't really see a problem with the top wealth list; you could leave it as it is and it would be fine.

I agree with Anaris that new spending options would be nice.

[Anaris]

I don't really mind this, but I don't think it is necessary. I don't really see a problem with the top wealth list; you could leave it as it is and it would be fine.

I agree with Anaris that new spending options would be nice.

And to expand a little, I think that such options should allow doing things that otherwise would either be impossible, annoying, or tedious, but at absurdly high prices for what you actually get.

I don't have any specific ideas yet, but I'd be open to suggestions

[Foxglove]

Anaris has the proper solution. Create more things on which to spend family wealth.

That would create an internal tension within the player - do they really want to be in the high score table that much? Or would they prefer to spend some of the wealth on material benefits? Gold hoarding to get higher up a high score table isn't a sign of wealth for an ambitious medieval family. True wealth equals a material display of wealth. That's why every wealthy family in history has invested in art, castles, mansions, etc. Or tulip bulbs, in the case of the Dutch.

[Indirik]

Taxation such as this would make accumulating anything over 10K completely pointless. Or, more properly, a way for people to essentially destroy gold, probably out of spite.

We need to control this with carrots, not with sticks. Give people stuff to spend their gold on, and they will spend. Arbitrarily take it away from them, and you'll just piss them off.

[Vita`]

As usual, I agree with both suggestions.

We definitely need more ways to spend family gold. That is without doubt and should be the highest priority than taking away a toy.

However, considering BM's long history of 10k family gold and the absolute ease it is to acquire family wealth with barely any effort, I think a tax rate on gold over 10k seems alright. I wouldn't make it a flat tax rate though, but make each realm allowed to set it at two percents like the old property/wealth taxes. Bankers or rulers would seem like likely candidates for such an option being available to them. Then, realms can compete by offering different tax schemes, allowing wealthier families to boost realm income or allowing families to increase their wealth for the families use, as that realm preferred. There should probably be a minimum tax rate set to prevent realms from preventing their wealthy families from being taxed however.

[Indirik]

I didn't get the impression that the tax gold form this would go to realms. I figured it would just disappear. Otherwise you are creating an untraceable, risk-free, effortless way for people to funnel gold between realms, and even between islands.

[Vita`]

I believe the original suggestion was for the gold to disappear, yes. But I think it would make much more sense for a banker or ruler to get an option to tax the wealthy families of their realm than to just disappear. It at least goes somewhere then and makes sense in the silly struggle of 'oh no, so and so sent bunches of kepler's taxes to his family' and 'well, look, kepler's banker is now taxing 5% of wealthy family's gold for our tax rate'.

And not to ruin the idea with too many idea, but perhaps it would also tax the gold of family homes in a realm, not just characters too? Would be incentive for caring where your family home is located instead of letting some realm none of your active characters have influence within tax your gold. Move your home or move a character.

[Indirik]

And not to ruin the idea with too many idea, but perhaps it would also tax the gold of family homes in a realm, not just characters too? Would be incentive for caring where your family home is located instead of letting some realm none of your active characters have influence within tax your gold. Move your home or move a character.

It would have to be done based on the location of the family home. Otherwise you'd be emptying family coffers an a ridiculous rate. Even three characters taxed at 5% each would lose you 15% of your family gold per month. (15,000 family gold taxed at 15% is 2,250 for the first month, almost 2,000 the second, etc.) Crank that up to 5 characters at 10% each, and you'd lose 50% of your family wealth per month. Taxing the entire family gold on a per-character basis simply does't work. It also just doesn't make any sense. Why would my poor character on Atamara be taxed based on the entire family's net worth, when my family home isn't even on Atamara? Is Caergoth going to send their tax ninja's to Montauban on the East Island to loot my family home?

And this is where the funneling of gold comes in. If you want to crank up your realm's incomes, you just have everyone with a family home in the realm to use their other characters to send gold home to the family. 10% of 20k is 2,000 gold a month. Get three or four people to do that, and you've got a serious ongoing income source. And as we've seen in the past, there are a lot of people willing to move family homes, and abuse family gold to an extreme level.

If this were done, and I think it's a bad idea regardless, the family gold would simply have to disappear.

[Buffalkill]

I think everything you're trying to achieve with this can be done by simply removing the cap on wealth full stop. It seems like a pointless restriction anyway.

[Tom]

Anaris has the proper solution. Create more things on which to spend family wealth.

That's the right solution, but we've known that for at least 5 years, and look: Nothing. It's a lot of work to come up with those things, and to balance them right and all.

Meanwhile, these two things are not mutually exclusive.

[Anaris]

That's the right solution, but we've known that for at least 5 years, and look: Nothing. It's a lot of work to come up with those things, and to balance them right and all.

Meanwhile, these two things are not mutually exclusive.

But meanwhile, there's also no negative consequences to leaving it as it is.

[Tom]

I think everything you're trying to achieve with this can be done by simply removing the cap on wealth full stop. It seems like a pointless restriction anyway.

It is not a pointless restriction. It prevents runaway competition and makes sure that there is some limit to the amount of gold lost to the game.

[Dishman]

I like the idea. I'm not sure about a blanket progressive tax on family wealth, though. I'd prefer taxation stay player controlled. Realm-wide or region-wide control would make for interesting relations.

As suggested, give realm banker the ability to tweak the tax on family wealth and generate money for the crown. Your folks in RealmAia are being taxed too heavily? Take that outrage and get your comrades from RealmBistan to set things right.

Another option would be to give the region lord the ability to set a tax on family estates in their region. Would make positions more sought after, especially those of your kin. Would make heroes more important with the ability to move families.

This puts the money back in the game and makes the location of the 'family home' have more impact. If you want atrophy in the gold supply, make a loss in the transaction. (say, if it's taxed at 5% the crown only gets 3% and the rest is lost in administration).

We need to control this with carrots, not with sticks. Give people stuff to spend their gold on, and they will spend. Arbitrarily take it away from them, and you'll just piss them off.

Although I agree that using the carrot is always better than using the stick on a player, GIVING a stick/carrot to a player (to administer as they wish) is always more interesting and engaging.