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...
Forum Discussion
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.
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.
- Hypothetical: you have 1 high rise with 1000 people and you collect $1000 in tax. Add a park nearby and the population increases to 1200(20%) but the tax only increases $1100(10%). This would suggest that the tax is not dependent directly on population or if it is, it's a weird artificial formula. What is more likely is that the tax is dependent on the type, size, and development of the building. Adding the park increases the value of the building(or at least the land around it). This is consistent with real life. The tenants in a building typically do not pay taxes to the city, the property owner does. Adding more tenants does not increase the tax revenue, however, adding improvements to a building usually increases the value and in turn increase the taxes.
