how is tax calculated?
if happiness goes down tax drops from 20% to 14.. 10 and so on
but what does 20% represent? and how is it calculated.
ive boosted my population by 30k, and my tax income has hardly increased by 400 coins/24h.
Forum Discussion
30 Replies
- Im not sure on the specifics yet but we do know for a fact that taxes are not calculated just by the base population before specializations. You can test this by moving a spec away from your city, and you will see an immediate drop in population and if you check city hall you'll notice your tax revenue has dropped as well. Theres another thread you guys should check out in discussion forum called "Wealth forecast- luxurious" for ongoing discussion. It appears tax revenue is based on a combination of base population + pop boost from specs. (Maximum boost of 400%).
One question we're still working on is whether land value/wealth forecast and building grade has a direct influence on the amount of tax revenue we collect or whether its just a prime indicator of high revenue. Currently I'm working on an experiment that will settle this. It will be a couple days before I have results as I'm currently working to isolate the test. here are some samples I took:
pop tax revenue %
5564 2964 53.271
5741 2990 52.081
5876 3010 51.225
6306 3075 48.763
6517 3106 47.659
7405 3239 43.740
8052 3335 41.418
10765 3740 34.742
10961 3770 34.394
11683 3877 33.184
14389 4282 29.758
16346 4574 27.982
20198 5149 25.492
28528 6393 22.409
30856 6741 21.846....
As you see that the more population you have the less you get per citizen. It seems that specialization, land value or home value doesn't matter (I've tested, but I might be wrong) .
@Aprigul wrote:here are some samples I took:
pop tax revenue %
5564 2964 53.271
5741 2990 52.081
5876 3010 51.225
6306 3075 48.763
6517 3106 47.659
7405 3239 43.740
8052 3335 41.418
10765 3740 34.742
10961 3770 34.394
11683 3877 33.184
14389 4282 29.758
16346 4574 27.982
20198 5149 25.492
28528 6393 22.409
30856 6741 21.846....
As you see that the more population you have the less you get per citizen. It seems that specialization, land value or home value doesn't matter (I've tested, but I might be wrong) .
This is kind of strange if you think about it. If you take reality as an example and assume 60% of the population is employed and you tax rate is fixed at 20% then as the population goes up the tax revenue should go up at least the same rate. So there has to be more to how it is calculated than that. Assuming wages per working sim is fixed and 60% of population works; using your data collected at the beginning of the list that's 4.44 revenue per working sim. And since 20% is a constant by the time we get to the bottom of your list there is a 92% loss in work force because otherwise at 60% of population workforce would generate 82,200 revenue. Now if we assume that every sim is concidered to contribute to the tax revenue then we have about 0.53 revenue per sim. So at the bottom of the list this same fixed 20% should be 16,437. So you data has a recorded loss of 41% from the top of the list. Either case very bad math being used in the game or far too many unknown variables that don't match basic reality much.
- I've assumed that the tax revenue is based on the assessed value of the residential buildings. This would be in line with real life. A city generally doesn't tax individual citizens, but the land and buildings they occupy. When you apply a park or service next to a building, its assumed value should rise, just as the desirability increases.
So, tax is not a function of population, but of building desirability. The problem we face in game here is no matter what way you look at "how" the taxes are collected it does not match any reasonable relation to reality. Even if it was based on number of units (aka property) the rate at which it increases at a flat property value should be at the same rate the population rises. But as I showed in the math of my previous post; as the population rises the tax rate decreases up to as much as 90% possibly more as the population increases more. So in essense what we are seeing is that supposed 20% rate rushes to a near 0% as the amount of tax revenue seen per sim goes towards zero as the population increases. It simply fails logic even for a simulation. I don't recall any other past simcity game having this craziness.
