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Bowex has a policy of paying the BPA and BAF 1mil in War Tax for every 40 earnt, although we have been getting a little lax on that recently:$
As something factions can organise between them, it's a good thing (See Bowex's renewal of the Royal Charter thread), but impractical for enforcing as a blanket on an entire House.
I suggested this myself a few months back, it attracts much resistance and usually results in optional donates done by factions, power traders obviously dont want to pay, someone mentioned possibly Flhook could be used to suck payments out of people, but then there was discussion on who got the cash, and indies not being represented (I think that was Akuma <.>).
Well how about making FL-hook, count each time you sell comodities. And on each sale a fraction say 5% would be given to a faction controling the zone. Naturaly some systems would be uncontroled and free of tax. While in some you would pay the tax.
Let's say you bring Prisoners to New Berlin. that's what 8Mil or something. When you sell your cargo the station would charge you some 5% in tax. that would be 400k. And that would bo to the Bank of Rheinland. This would deposit cash to a FL-hook account file, so we don't get a 1.9bil balance problem. And every now and then Leader of RM would be able to draw cash from the country's resources.
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Putting it in a bank would give an incentive to be official. (See the recent debate)
Some other thing to consider:
*Smugglers would try to get out of paying the tax (Being smugglers)
*The Tax would only be levied on imported goods. It's not like they're going to tax their own businesses.
' Wrote:Bowex has a policy of paying the BPA and BAF 1mil in War Tax for every 40 earnt, although we have been getting a little lax on that recently:$
As something factions can organise between them, it's a good thing (See Bowex's renewal of the Royal Charter thread), but impractical for enforcing as a blanket on an entire House.
EDIT: 1000th post!
*celebrates*
APM also already pays taxes to the BPA and BAF for certain routes. It's something that we negotiated in RP with them.
It's one of those things that as a faction provides for some lateral cash flow as well as some RP. It's also something that's unwieldy for houses to do on a regular basis.
Think about it - you'd have to have, as a minimum, 2 or 3 players PER house online all the time just to sit at the official borders. I'd rather just see something where factions negotiate for the rights to carry certain cargoes and pay taxes - and smugglers get bounties posted on them so that they can be stopped and/or taken down by bounty hunters.
Actually, it's a terrible idea. All it will do is essentially turn house militaries into house-owning pirates. Forcing passerby to pay taxes upon threat of detention or death is exactly what pirates do. If you're in it to bother people and make credits in the process, be a pirate, don't sit on your butt in your Battle Ship outside your capital planet's docking ring.
For some reason there seems to be a lot of animosity towards individuals, especially those who are not already well-established in the server, who simply wish to trade to make a credits to get some decently-equipped characters up and running. And what in the world is this insane banter about "power-trading"? Of course people want to make as much of a profit as possible. What's wrong with that? How is it OORP? In a realistic world, there are many more people out there trying to make a profit than there are fighting and risking their lives for some idea. Don't make it even less realistic by turning Sirius into a place where everyone's out to kill each other.
Not to mention the fact that by further discouraging trading through instituting these so-called "taxes", you will be reducing the number of traders and cutting into the pirate's profit as well.
To use taxes as a mechanism to force traders to join a faction, you are also further discouraging independent RP and making things more difficult for someone who simply wants to trade to make a profit, which is certainly perfectly appropriate RP, considering that most corporations either restrict where a trader can work, what he can fly, or skim off his profits.
If you do institute these taxes, the House militaries in RP should, as a matter of fact, work to protect the interests of the traders whom they are trying to protect. And judging by their performance now, I'm not too optimistic about this prospect. This might even mean-heaven forbid-assisting traders in distress in the border worlds. Like that's ever going to happen...
And how do you enforce this? Would you see house militaries and police blockading against or outright murdering friendly and neutral traders who don't wish to pay? That's realistic.
In RP, I always assumed that all taxes were taken at the bases at which the items were bought and sold.
But I guess just like in real life, it's hard to discourage a government from taking money from the little guy.
Unrealistic, cuts into pirate's profits, discourages free RP, makes it harder for a lot of new players.
Point is, bad idea, however interesting it may be.
The governments would collect the taxes from the bases. The bases would pass on the taxes to the traders in the form of adjusting the prices of the commodities.
Imo, we already pay these taxes, we just don't see it. Value-Added Tax is levied at source. Why create a whole bunch of paperwork when you can just tax the bases, not the individual traders.
It would be like having a government official outside every shop in town, and when you came out, they would ask to see what you had bought, and then ask for a couple of quid as well. Much better to levy a VAT on the shop-keeper, and make him pay the taxes in monthly/quarterly installments.
Tax Manhatten! Yus!
LN: This is the LN audit review, please submit your quarterly accounts manhatten.
Planet Manhatten:
LN: please respond.
PM:
LN: last warning manhatten.
PM:
LN:opening fire.
All dock turrets open fire on LN ship, as do the passing battleship+cruiser patrols.
LN: Arrrrgh! My cockpit is cracking! Losing power!