I've been playing TheSims since day one of the original game on the PC. So, I'm a long time fan of the franchise, and I have enjoyed the games very much. I'm probably even one of the very few who also enjoyed the spinoff game, TheUrbz. I've spent so much of my personal time and money on the franchise over the years, and I've not really been too disappointed. However, one thing I absolutely despise about building games is having a limit to what I can build or how much I can put into a build. That's why with TheSims 3 and 2, I could not stand the Fire Code that limited builds due to the risk of things just spontaneously combusting. It heavily rendered my builds, and I felt so restricted to my creations I stopped enjoying the games. Now, due to the outrageous Lot Taxes on TheSims 4, I can no longer build the way I like, and it's very infuriating. I've always been one for building large homes and then creating a family to live in them, but with the excruciatingly painful amount I have to pay with these large builds, I'm not able to do that anymore. I'm now reduced to building smaller places and using the cheapest of cheap items in order to keep the lot value down, and quite frankly it's no longer any fun for me. Please EA, do something about this. Either reduce or eliminate the problem altogether, cause as of right now, I no longer want to play the game cause I get frustrated just knowing I've been restricted yet again.

@Josulyhar How high are your bills? My bills got ill-proportionally high at one point when I had lots of valuable items (in my case it was mainly produce) in my household & personal inventories. When I reduced those inventories with this in mind my bills became proportional.

@Josulyhar You could get better paying jobs, take part time jobs (painting and writing pays well) or you could always cheat for money.

@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!!!

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.

@JosulyharOkay friend, making money in this game is so easy that you'll find lot taxes cheap, here are your options :1 - Do aspirations and get a job, buy upgrades that increase your pay grade and keep getting promoted.2 - Train the painting skill till it's like 7 or later, buy a digitalistic sketchpad and upgrade it with the handiness skill required to draw those paintings quicker, you'll be swimming in money in no time.3 - Be a writter, every book you finish, publish it and every single day they will generate revenue.4 - Complete the fabulously wealthy aspiration and you'll earn a load of money based on how much you currently have in hands5 - Find a strawberry and a snappdragon flower, plant them on a planter and keep them alive while you grind gardening, once you can graft, grab a single graft from one plant and place them on the other, this will cause them to spawn Dragon Fruits with them but they regrow slowly. Plant the dragon fruits and sell the harvest, you'll be rich.5 - This one is cheaty, befriend some sim, ask him to move to your household and transfer their money, then do away with your new roommate, don't worry, they don't need the money and you will not see a heartbreaking message like that one on TS3 bringing gossips about someone being completely broke.6 - Fishing and collecting stuff from the map, including but not limited to plants, rocks and frogs will give you plenty to sell and can be done every single day.7 - Getting an item that uses less water/power and upgrading it with handiness might as well replace those expensive appliances from the build mode, including the beds.8 - Rooms that you don't need to be lit can be set to auto-light and save a ton of money in those bills, there are also small lamps like those diamond ones resembling the moods that consume nothing, mounting them on the walls with platforms might save you money as well.9 - The Nano Can is a trash can that actually pays you to dispose of your trash, abuse it.and finally10 - something broke? fix it and sell the spare parts you can harvest from the trash.

Lot Taxes Too High!! | EA Forums

41 Replies

jpkarlsen
Hero (Retired)
5 years ago
@Josulyhar
You could get better paying jobs, take part time jobs (painting and writing pays well) or you could always cheat for money.
Trismagistos
Hero
5 years ago
@Josulyhar most of my buildings are mansions too. A lot of my households live on the 64 by 64 tiles plots of the Sims 4. But also in The Sims 3 my mansions were huge. I never had a problem with the height of the taxes.

A short period, just after the release of Eco Living, the taxes were really low and not in relation to the used materials nor the standard of living. Since the last patchupdate, they have been brought back to a more realistic level.

To give a few examples, the cheapest of the buildings comes down to around 1 million simoleons the most expensive ones over 15 million.

I also started from day one and as soon as the money tree returned I bought one with the 5000 aspiration (satisfaction) points and used some fantasy and deduction. (grafting)
Now all the households have at least 5 or more trees an the fruits will pay any bill.

Then of course, for all the sims living on these plots I will buy the frugal trait and some other money saving traits. And finally, the more ecological equipment you use the lower your household bills will get.

So instead of paying over 200,000 or up to 1,5 million my sims will pay from 10,000 to 150,000 each time. And they can still fill their coffers.

Have fun playing. 😉
* Sorry but I had to edit this post several times because the autocorrect on my phone made all sorts of strange semi Dutch words 😒
SheriGR
Hero
5 years ago
@Josulyhar How high are your bills? My bills got ill-proportionally high at one point when I had lots of valuable items (in my case it was mainly produce) in my household & personal inventories. When I reduced those inventories with this in mind my bills became proportional.
Josulyhar
5 years ago
@jpkarlsenI don't really prefer cheating. Just takes away from the game altogether. Much rather earn what I gain. Plus turning on cheats deactivates achievements for that save slot.
Josulyhar
5 years ago
One home I have is up to 50k, and I only have 4k. I can't even play that family anymore cause I have to have the bill paid in a day. There's no way I can make that much in time, so I'm gonna have to kick them out and delete the lot. I've seen some people who have said their bills are up in the 100-400k range. In my opinion, these lot taxes just add a more frustration element to a game that's supposed to just be fun and relaxing. Sure it's supposed to "Sim"ulate real lives, somewhat, but come on. I understand utility and other bills in-game, but lot taxes? What the hell for? The lot taxes put a huge damper on anybody who just wants to build big places and play cause unfortunately the families only start out with 20k, nowhere near enough to pay the first bill that's bound to come. At least not without cheating, and I really don't wanna have to do that.
SheriGR
Hero
5 years ago
@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
Hero
5 years ago
@SheriGR my Sims still have all their stuff in their inventories. I did not see any differences in bills when they have it or not. But I need to check it out more thoroughly. Like I stated, I managed to graft a branch of the money tree onto an garlic plant, that my sims also grow indoors. Any time they harvest and collect it, instead of selling it, the bills stay the same.
As a matter of fact many of my households need to buy safes to stash the surplus they gain by collecting the interest on their wealth. It can go up to 500.000 per Sim per week.

The plot taxes that came with Eco Living are a different order. In my experience this tax relates to the Eco friendliness of the house, the plot and the household goods.

Having electric lights instead of candles causes the tax to increase. As does televisions, computers etc. You need to make the electric equipment more energy sufficient, the toilets, showers and baths safe more water etc. These actions also lower the plot taxes. Than of course you should watch out not to use the more industrious materials. In the build mode you will see if these materials will heighten or lower the ecological footprint of the plot. More industrious materials tend to give a surge in plot taxes.

So all in all household bills and taxes combined make up for the end bill that each household needs to pay.
When your household does it economically and ecologically right it will receive refunds on the end bill.
Psychotps
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
@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.
Trismagistos
Hero
5 years ago
@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. 😉
Psychotps
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
@Trismagistos So the vault money no longer counts towards it. That's good to know.

I don't think I'll need to worry about it. After playing hundreds of households, ever since the "lottery" thing started, I've only had a sim win it once, that one time. I don't seem to play a household long enough to gain more than a quarter million. Before half that time expires, my sims are so leveled up and OP, they're not fun any more. I tend to move on to someone else.