Tax is a percentage of what? (simcity buildit)

Taxes arent a percentage of population. As far as I can tell, taxes are a percentage of a theoretical income your sims generate. Tax RATES can only reach 20% but tax REVENUE can always be increased through specializations. So in your case with a population of 114 000 we can deduce by simple cross multiplication that your sims generate a theoretical total income of 60 000 simoleons daily. You receive 20% of that when at full happiness. As an FYI, each individual sim in your city is currently generating 1.9 simoleons daily.

CORRECTION: each of your sims is currently generating 0.52 simoleons per day..of which you receive up to 20%

CJ

@subar-speed, if you can give me your exact population and daily revenue I can do some testing and cross reference this. I'm still not absolutely sure and this needs more investigation

I am confused by the tax rate also. The numbers aren't exact but close. When my population was 100,000 I was making tax revenue of approx 12,000 simpleons daily. Now my population is 217,000 and I make 14,000 simoleons daily. Both at 20% tax rates.

In theory I should be making around double or 26,000 daily.

I did a few calculations using msw's figures because they represent a fairly typical population growth vs revenue pattern similar to mine and I actually found a disturbing trend.. Each of msw's sims is making 53.3% less in simoleons per citizen since his/her population climbed from 100 k to 217 k. It totally looks like an artificial inflationary mechanism most likely to prevent us from growing too fast.

Here's my calculations, remember this is premised on the fact that a 20% tax rate is based on a total 100% city income and not on a percentage of the actual population figure. So msw's tax revenue at 100k population is 12,000 simols daily. 12,000 is 20% of 60,000. So we can agree that the city as a whole is generating 60,000 theoretical simoleons daily of which we get our 20% cut. Divide 60,000 by the 100,000 population and this tells us each individual sim is generating 0.6 simoleons daily.

Now go ahead to msw's population of 217,000 where hes now earning 14,000 simols daily which works out to 70,000 simols total city earnings. 70,000 divided by 217,000 population works out to 0.32 simoleons per sim per day. 53.3 % less earning power.

The numbers dont lie and theres definetely some type of inflation and simoleons just dont buy as much as they used to when the city is younger...much like in the real world I suppose. But in this case it seems a little pre planned...much like in the real world lol.

Anyway Ive made this my pet project and plan on demolishing my city once more to start further testing from the start and hopefully get some solid figures and start compiling my own in depth tax guide.

CJ

Ive now demolished and tested this using only one RZ placed in low wealth forecast/land value with all three essential service coverage but no spec coverage. I upgraded the RZ up to tier six. (Note that I maintained 100% happiness) And I can confirm that sims earn less per capita as the population grows. It starts at 117.01 simoleons per day per sim with tier one housing, and goes down to 4.94 simoleons per day per sim for tier six housing. Over combined upgrades this represents an overall inflation rate of 49.22%.

This is an insane inflation rate and most economies would crumble unless propped up by artificial currency and pricing which this game clearly is at present. This game is interesting, I will keep playing.

Note: i will post all my pics in sequence for this test

Thank you for sharing your findings and taking the time doing the research.

Did anything ever come of this? (Sorry if I didn't get far enough down in the thread to see.) Also, could I play with the data you collected if you didn't run regressions?