Lot Taxes Too High!!
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 als...
Forum Discussion
@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.
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.
@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.
@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. 😉
- @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. @Trismagistos Hmmm... Well, when I had that happen with my household bills it was about a year and a half ago at least. This was before they re-vamped billing. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember that the money/cash they had didn't seem to effect bills like that produce did. As I said, they had probably a million or more in produce in the end. They also had a large home with expensive content, but not a mansion and not extravagant.
For now, I've been avoiding playing my homes with extensive gardens as I don't want the plants to get buggy from the gardening bug. I also didn't play any of the ones with extensive gardens for any long periods of time after the Eco pack. So did you have that much produce in inventory (mine was a combo of personal and household inventory - where my tons of produce was sitting)? I just kept having them harvest it and wasn't thinking it would matter that much.
I do remember that at that time if they had lots of produce in the Lice Cold Freezers in their (owned) retail stores it didn't seem to affect their bills like it did if they kept it in their personal inventories, which I thought was interesting.
Actually, I keep perfect produce plants for supplemental income on my lots frequently, and I have never noticed a huge bill since the revamping of bills around the time the Eco pack was released. That's not to say that it would not affect it if I accumulated a huge amount of produce in personal inventories again, but I haven't re-tested that. I'm obsessive about selling all but a small amount of the produce now.
- @SheriGR Personally, I don't keep most of the harvestables. I usually grow one plant of each of the common food ingredients. Tomatoes, Potatoes, Carrots, Onions, Mushrooms, Basil, Spinach, Parsley, and Strawberries. I usually also have Roses (multiple uses for those) and Snapdragons for a while until I can graft them with the strawberries.
I usually take one harvest and stick it in the fridge so cooking is cheaper. Replenishing when they either run out or the plants increase a few levels. (better meals) Otherwise, I always Sell All or SuperSell.
I never saw a point to keeping more than one of each plant. Normal meals, even for a large family, will never use more than one plant harvest in quite a while. So, what's the benefit to having more than one Tomato plant? You can't use all the harvestables from ONE plant if you tried. So you sell them for money? There are a TON of better ways to make money than caring for dozens of plants.
I never saw any benefit to keeping ALL of the harvestables. Seems to be a huge waste to me when I could be selling them for cash.
I used to use the beehive quite a lot but it's so severely OP when it comes to plant evolution that I had to stop using it.
Unless I grow DragonFruit, the money from harvesting is piddly. If I need to make money, usually book royalties or paintings are better. I usually only grow DragonFruit now if I'm in a rush to buy a better house since one plant will give over 2K a day.
Bill costs don't bother me much as long as they work. If something doesn't work, it's more the fact that I don't like something broken, even if it's a minor cost increase/decrease.
I'm still not sure if I like the new billing system. I like the power and water storage/selling part. But that's pretty much useless in anything other than an off-the-grid lot. Auto-selling power and water doesn't gain you enough money to make it worth worrying about, even with upgraded appliances. And frankly, I'd rather have the larger bills. Money is a bit too easy to make and nothing to spend it on.
