I know I'm late to the party and if there is a newer thread pertaining to taxes, sorry, I found this one google searching for Tax and population... Now on with the show...
Most people believe that taxes are based on Population alone and that EA has it specifically set up to limit your growth. I believe this to be the furthest from the truth, but in actuality is a reflection of the services you provide to the city. The more expensive the service, the fewer future tax dollars you can make. Unlike the other PC based SimCity games which would take the money for services directly from what you currently have in the bank, instead, it takes the money from your tax revenue that you will make over time. It's my opinion that this was done so that you cannot possibly get upside down on your revenue stream vs. cost of services, which is a plus with a game you can't just start over. This is also unlike the PC versions of SimCity, which would allow you to owe in services more than what you're bringing in and if left unchecked can spiral you into a negative cash flow and not even be able to fix it without the revenue to do so. I remember having to restart many games in SimCity 2000 years ago for just this reason.
The bottom line is that Services and maybe even specializations are not free. They cost you somewhere and in this case, they're taking it from the taxes you will make rather than the money you currently have. It may look like you're making more per population early on in your game play, but that is only because in the beginning stages of playing you're not required to have any services at all, but as you go up in levels and required to place more services, you notice the net increase tapering off. This is because those services cost money and that money has to come from somewhere..... Your net tax revenue stream.
As an example from my own city. I recently reorganized my entire city, which is what made me start researching the tax revenue stream in the first place. This was because prior to reorganizing my city, I had a population of roughly 511,000 with a revenue stream of just over 20,000. After the reorganization, I had a population boost to roughly 570,000, but a tax loss down to roughly 19,500 with the exact same residential zones I had prior to the reorganization.
The major differences between the two configurations are this..... Prior to the change, I used mostly the cheapest service to get the job done. I was very heavy on small parks, small clinics, small fire stations and small police stations. After the change, I now have mostly all the Basic Police Stations, Deluxe Fire Stations and Large Hospitals with only a couple additional clinics. Additionally I changed to providing water purely with Water Pumping Stations, Converted my Coal power plants to Oil Power plants, Converted some (not all) Basic Sewage Outflow pipes to Deluxe Sewage Treatment Plants as well as replacing every 1x1 park with two 1x2 parks placed side by side to take up the space of 2x2, but spread apart so that every building was covered by 4 parks. This GREATLY boosted the population by greater than 60,000 alone.
Although, in doing all these changes, which for the city itself was for the better, it yielded a net income loss due to the more expensive services and larger parks (providing that parks actually take away from the net tax revenue). The specifics of which is actually being affected by what is still left to the imagination because I could not find a single thing that would specifically show me an instant change in tax revenue by placing or removing, so that makes it much harder to tell.
If tax revenue were purely based on population alone, I should have seen an increase in my before and after, which is what I was hoping for, but instead I have a cleaner look and better services provided to my sims, but at a cost to my tax revenue.
That is my own personal conclusion based on my own experiences in the game and to me.... it makes a lot of sense.
To all,
This thread is very old, in terms of time played in this game. Now it is September 2017.
My city has a population of 1,646,884 Sims. Tax collection is only 24,705 per day. My neighbor started a city recently and his daily tax collection on 345,000 Sims is 16,502. My population is 4.77 times his but my tax collection is only 1.49 times that of his. More specifically my tax collection is .015 cents per person. His is .047 cents. There is no reason to substantiate EA's calculations. (except see below)
If the above were true about "city services costing tax revenue" then the further you progress and the better your city services are, the tax revenue would disappear altogether. In fact EA advertises the fact that the "better your city services are" - the better your buildings will look. So it is a programmed game value.
In my real life community all but Fie and Police protection are private industries. They are not Government institutions. The rest have nothing to do with tax collection. Our real life tax bills do show the mills going to Fire and Police but IT DOES NOT REDUCE OUR TAX BILL. The city still taxes us at a higher rate. They don't receive lower tax monies just because they provide services or as the population increases. It's the opposite.
Certainly Health, Power, Sanitation, Water and Refuse are paid for by the citizens outside the Governmental bodies.
So why should EA fashion the game around this ideal? Answer is they do not. Simple logic tells us that taking away the Mayors resources leads to a player "buying Simcash with real greenback dollars". Am I guessing about this issue? No. I have been playing for about 990 days now.
Am I trying to beat up a "for profit corp"? No. The question of fairness really comes in to play here. Projected profits at EA this year/last year are at $875,000,000 and up. Look it up I did.
Then the real question comes to mind: how much is the cost for perpetual play of this game? I know they need to make money to support this game, I have also spent money in support. But what is that fair cost? $5, $10, $50 or $100 per month? There are players out there that say they do spend any money at all. Okay I have done that too. But either way the hand cuffs on a Mayor trying to be successful still exist.
I am not complaining, just asking what is a fair value? Should we continue to pay real money just to have our tax collection starved by the game?
sm-t701
EA just stating the truth here, no need to take me off this forum fro doing so. Just want you to be fair.
smt do you really think that anyone working with ea on simcity build it can earn 5 10 50 100 dollars? There is a phone you can ring and get to simcity (or maybe ea) call centre. Do you think they work for free 5 days a week? You can send an email about any problems related to game, someone will read it, again for free? these are just two examples of many. I hope that after all costs there is still huge amount of cash which can goes to devs, shareholders and all future investments or games which we will be playing next years
Increase in population with no change in employment will result in low tax as the system calculates tax @same income with increased population.
Basically, our Mayor is generous.
TIP- Try increasing commercial buildings, upgrading them, increasing slots.
