Re: Lot Taxes Too High!!

@Josulyhar Isn't it bills, not just taxes, or am I confusing something? Hopefully I'm talking about the same thing. I love to garden and have uploaded a bunch of my plants to the gallery under the same user ID I have here. If you want to download the perfect dragonfruit plant into your game 4-6 times you could keep it indoors so it bloomed all year. Harvest and sell the fruit and this should help a great deal. I also have other high-ticket (for selling) plants in the gallery. 

If you read at the link I posted in my last reply, I apologize as this would be a repeat of some of the info, but it is my personal 'cautionary tale' on my bills lesson:

I have noticed that a huge inventory of valuable harvestables that were in both the personal inventories and the household inventory gave one of my Sim households a HUGE household bill. I about fell off my chair when their household bills came due at over $65,000! It turned out that this was mainly caused by the stockpile of valuable harvestables in both the personal inventories and the household inventory. It took me at least two hours to sell all of their produce, but that was the issue! Their next bills were reasonable… and after I sold all of the produce, they were millionaires!!!

@Trismagistos

Haven't tested it thoroughly since the bills update since it's been broken ever since, but in the past things in your inventory didn't count towards your bills. I'm assuming that part is the same.

I had a sim who had a cheaper lot, bills were around 2K I think. She won the lottery and suddenly had a million. I decided to stash all of it away and continue playing, so I made a vault and stashed the full million in there. The instant I did, my bills went up an additional 45K. Having the money on me didn't increase it, but as soon as it became part of my lot, it did.

The latest update is better but its still broken. Power and Water don't count towards your bills in any way, positive or negative. The only way surplus power and water helps is when you click to sell the surplus... which it should be doing automatically if set that way, only it doesn't. If you have a negative power or water, it never counts on your bills. Mine reached max negative and just stayed there, never adding to my bills.

I'm still using that mod by zhan. That still works just fine.

@Psychotps, @SheriGR, @Josulyhar I did some digging again and i found out that one of the lots decreased in value. Instead of 22 million it is now only worth 2,2 million. This is the lot that has 6 filled vaults with a combined asset of 20 million simoleons. So this money is not counted to the lot value anymore and my household there is not paying extreem amounts either. They pay a total amount of 161,940 see Screenshot 1

Their liquidity is near to 7 million and because of the high end ecological stuff they have their refund totals more than 900,000.

The second bill is from a household in Sulani. They too, have a lot of Ecological stuff, no vaults, but not all of them have the frugal trait.

I have made a lot of screenshots to compare the cost of living on a couple of lots but the lowest bills are of the household I currently play. They live in Brindleton Bay on a smaller plot, 40 by 40 of round about 900,000 (that also became cheaper) have a liquidity of 5,2 million and a vault filled with 5 million. They pay 41,662

When asked for I will share the other screenshots too.

Have fun playing. 😉

@Trismagistos Hmmm... Well, when I had that happen with my household bills it was about a year and a half ago at least. This was before they re-vamped billing. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember that the money/cash they had didn't seem to effect bills like that produce did. As I said, they had probably a million or more in produce in the end. They also had a large home with expensive content, but not a mansion and not extravagant.

For now, I've been avoiding playing my homes with extensive gardens as I don't want the plants to get buggy from the gardening bug. I also didn't play any of the ones with extensive gardens for any long periods of time after the Eco pack. So did you have that much produce in inventory (mine was a combo of personal and household inventory - where my tons of produce was sitting)? I just kept having them harvest it and wasn't thinking it would matter that much. 

I do remember that at that time if they had lots of produce in the Lice Cold Freezers in their (owned) retail stores it didn't seem to affect their bills like it did if they kept it in their personal inventories, which  I thought was interesting.

Actually, I keep perfect produce plants for supplemental income on my lots frequently, and I have never noticed a huge bill since the revamping of bills around the time the Eco pack was released. That's not to say that it would not affect it if I accumulated a huge amount of produce in personal inventories again, but I haven't re-tested that. I'm obsessive about selling all but a small amount of the produce now. 

@SheriGR One of my main Sims, I have been playing with him from the start, has a hugh amount of items in his inventory. He collected it throughout his travels in all the worlds/maps and packs. He is one of the three Sims with which  I started the storytelling line and the family tree. At a certain moment, before the alterations of the inventory, I had to sell the content because the gameplay became to laggy in my experience. And just like your Sim (it took me quite some time) he became a millionaire.

I also stashed some of the fruit and veggies in the household inventory and I even made a museum (curators target). At a certain moment I wanted to adjust that messy cellar and when I picked up some of the items the had, it had tremendously increased in value. All perfect items. To give you an example, one blackberry of over 2,000 simoleons an cowplantberry of over 12,000.

So I checked his own inventory and saw the same results. I guess that this has been altered since Eco Living but I am not exactly sure when it was altered. It could have been long before that time. As a matter of fact, that didn't matter that much anymore. At a certain point my households get such enormous intrest rates which I can't spend on a weekly bases. So I let 'them' spend it on renovating and remodeling their dwellings. 😉 @Psychotps I agree with you in that matter that it tends to get a little boring. But because it is not the way I play the game, I can't be bothered. I just move the households to bigger plots, buy more items with which they can train their skills an send the offspring off into the world. Many times I see a sim with a familiar surname and I really have to dig into the family tree to find out which branch the Sim comes from.

@SheriGR As you know I do love them to potter around in the garden and we both seem to have indoor gardens. I also use the hydro planters and the only bug I experience is that when I want teenagers to gain the Freelance Botanist goal, there is a difficulty with developing the plants. Even when I let them buy seeds, as soon as they plant them, the plant turns perfect overnight. I also use the fruits and vegetables for cooking but some of my Sims have gained almost all the traits and I keep these Sims to boost and train the skills of others. These Sims only eat for pleasure.

It sounds like both of you have played more with your plants than I have recently. The most recent experimenting I did with them was after the Eco pack when I tested bugs (found my plants were not experiencing the current bugs in the vertical planters, which was a relief). I didn't test the self-watering planters since players have to create them with higher skills or access via hidden objects. (Heck, it's easy to get them watered anyway via upgraded sprinklers, a butler, patchy, or hiring a gardener, if I don't want to deal with it or want backup.)

As to your comments on what plants I grow, @Psychotps ...back when I began gardening a ton with huge gardens to experiment, splice, etc., I sold them in my retail stores along with dishes made. I grew most to 'perfect' and made expensive dishes. Though I could have just sold them 'as-is' more simply, I did sell some via the retail store for part of the produce (per my 'storyline'/thinking, a tomato may be cheap but we still want to be able to buy it at a retail/'grocery' store for our dishes) and flowers (flower arrangements) for a pretty penny after mark-up, and I would just 'super-sell' the rest. Even at that many of the fruits and veggies are moderate in value, so I may only have one or two plants of those, but the valuable ones I would grow multiples of (dragon fruit, BoP, roses, UFO, bonsai, etc.).

In my game I play large households of Sims that work jobs to the top tier (sometimes of multiple careers) with aging off. Then in the hours they're not at work they run restaurants and retail stores and raise families. I also do the 'takes a village' approach to running the home and businesses for parenthood. And I am good to my Sims. That's how I keep from being bored in my game. 

I eventually created plants with multi-fruits, multi-veggies, and multi-flowers that were perfect and grafted so as to produce outdoors, unsheltered year-round. Those plants will produce sufficiently for making a small cooking and income garden on the lot when I build now, plus I can add to those perfect versions of trees and plants that are sheltered for the income-plants in a small greenhouse or indoor area. So... bottom line, my Sims end up quickly accumulating plenty of money from their gardens 'on the side', and I can control efficiently how much so this will happen by the plants I add to their lot.

@SheriGR

Wow, that's a brilliant idea. Never thought about that. Grafting different season plants together to get around the dormancy.

And to think, all I did was write a mod that turns off "out of season".

If I really want a lot of money fast, I just make a trip to willow creek, grab some strawberries and snapdragons, graft and get dragonfruit. Plant them with a beehive nearby. In a little over a week, I'll have all perfect plants getting over 3K per plant. Grow 4 of them and I'll have well over 10K a day doing nothing but gardening. Put them on a tiny lot and they'll evolve even faster.

I tend to not play in "story mode", I can't help but play as efficiently as possible. Grow roses for laundry buffs and dating gifts, go on a date to get gold and use the ice bucket to make future romances faster and easier, get a post card from a pen pal for a free "Inspired" buff anytime I want. Same with crystals "energized" buffs and dolls "Playful" buffs when needed to make workouts level faster, comedy skill building faster... I tend to have my sims eat on the sofa watching Cooking shows or comedy that way they replenish hunger, build fun and cooking or comedy all at the same time... etc

I can't help but play that way.

@Psychotps I agree and I love the multitasking possibilities!! One of my fave multitasking tips for keeping Sims fit is to put two treadmills side-by-side in the home with a TV in front of them. Then get the Sims the 'gym rat' reward. I play the Sims directing two at a time to run/workout and watch the cooking channel at the same time. They socialize while they're at it, and if memory serves, because they are watching TV their fun raises. Physical, cooking, and social also raise. After I do that for a couple of Sim weeks on a regular basis they get in the 'habit'. I did this with Clement Frost in the household and didn't have him get on the treadmill, but I came back to the house after time had passed and even he's lost weight! They seem to enjoy it! Anyway, multitasking is awesome, I completely agree.

I have read some of the solutions regarding the high tax bill. These are not the point. I do not pay tax every week or month or year on my belongings just when I initially buy them in the real world. One should not have to clear out their inventory or cheat or alter the way they live because of the way some people perceive life. If you want the real world apply tax inclusively at time of purchase and leave it alone. I too enjoy this game, it is my downtime and I no longer find it enjoyable due to these taxes. My sim has a simple life in the science career, she should not have to clear out inventory especially since she needs it for her work. Now she has twins and I find I can't expand the house without cheats, or pay a bill. 

Well, I made a mod on MTS that accounts for the latent power drain on the new lots. The appliances still seem to drain power at a higher rate than the other worlds though.

I thought since they re-did the billing system that it would work better but it's been buggier than ever.  I think the entire system needs another re-design.

Why are lot taxes so high? My sim is paying 60g a year in taxes!!  Nothing I do will bring her down to $0. I would like the eco and off grid items to at least have her break even.