Hello,
As the title suggests, I'll be discussing why I personally believe that there shouldn't be a tax, why it is an ineffective method of money collection, and suggestions as to how to form an actual fluctuating economy in the game so the Imperial Bank doesn't run out of money.

The Problem with Taxing
A bit of context before we start: Damen is planning to impost a 5-10% percent tax on all gold, depending on how much an account has.

That doesn't sound that much, right?

Wrong.

Say you have 500k, which is a considerable sum of gold. Now, say you were taxed 10% of your gold. That's 50k. Let me put in to perspective how much gold that is: 50k is enough to buy both medkits on 6 different accounts, and still have gold left over.

You are losing a considerable sum of YOUR gold because the Imperial Bank doesn't have a way to generate gold.

Why Taxing is an Ineffective Method
Taxing is a method that provides the Imperial Bank with a certain amount of gold, but that gold will last the Bank only a while. Without a proper source of income, the Bank is just going to keep facing problems in terms of gold.

Solutions:

1) Easiest: Transfer the gold on "Damen" to the Imperial Bank:
Not exactly a solution, but since the "Damen" account has 2 million gold, it'd keep the Bank in check for a while.



2. Easy: Transfer the gold spent on transforms to the Bank:
Every month, a lot of people spend money on transforms, especially ones like medkit and medkit2. That's cool and all, but where does the gold go? Does it disappear?

Yes, but it shouldn't.

Idk if Damen's able to make it so that the amount spend on transforms is transferred to the Bank but, if he's able to, he should do that.

If not, he can make a rough estimate to transfer to the bank each month, which would be a bit tedious, but a much simpler solution.

3) Hard: Add a fluctuating economy between islands
This is an experimental thing I did back when I was Emperor Regent, and it worked out pretty ok.

I added an "Island Defense Program", where rulers of South-allied islands were given a Lightsaber Construction Kit, and every once in a while, the South would sell Kyber Crystals to these island rulers in big quantities (around 16 sabers' worth of crystals). However, to make it fair, we first had to buy the Kybers from Providence for an, understandably, lower price.

This way, both Providence and the South made money, and island rulers were able to legally buy weapons to arm their soldiers with.

Or, my personal favorite:

4) Just generate gold
It's a game. You don't have to mimic the real life economy. You can just generate more gold. (If that's not reason enough for you, mints (money printing places) exist in real life.)

When the Bank gets low, they should just be able to generate money in certain amounts. Because there's no fluctuating economy and the gold spent on stuff like transforms basically disappears, I'd say it evens itself out.


Well, that's about it
Cheers

Tbh, might be easy for him just to bring back that gold tax of what was it 5 percent? It was annoying but at least we weren't getting all our gold taxed every month and it was equal for all players.

Changing the percentage rate after a certain amount of gold isn't a good idea either, people will just transfer part of their gold to their alts to get out of paying a higher tax rate.

I think the transform purchases going to the imperial bank would be the best idea. Bullet and arrow money could also all go to the imperial bank as well.

Loki wrote on 6th August 2020, 02:00 PM:

Tbh, might be easy for him just to bring back that gold tax of what was it 5 percent? It was annoying but at least we weren't getting all our gold taxed every month and it was equal for all players.
Changing the percentage rate after a certain amount of gold isn't a good idea either, people will just transfer part of their gold to their alts to get out of paying a higher tax rate.

There should be no tax whatsoever.

There's already a government on top of my head who's out to get everything I own irl, I don't need one on Oldcp as well.

Oldcp is a game, where the term "economy" means absolutely nothing. There are much better solutions than taxing the people of their gold that they stayed online for.

Another suggestion: Make firearm payments go into the imperial bank. This will be helpful considering the excessive conflict through wars and crimezone at the moment.

1. Already working on that.
2. Already working on that as well.
3. Good idea, but a lot of islands are consistently going back and forth from evil to good. It’s hard to decide which will be able to buy from us, considering war happens pretty much every other week. Although we can simply just cut them off, that lessens a source of income.
4. There is no purpose to LOTB then.

I have hired two Financial Advisors, Rouge and Dice. Dice will mainly be helping with calculating how much gold we will have to pay throughout each month, how much our gold will last us, and how reduce payments. Rouge will mainly be helping with coming up with events and helping to plan them as fundraisers. The dinner was her idea as a fundraiser, and it seems that a lot of other people are excited about it.

Although tax isn’t super efficient, it is still helpful every couple of months. That was our original plan, to do a 5% tax every two months or so. Although, Damen doesn’t consult me about what he chooses to do and he simply made it 10%.

We already have other plans in the works, and other events as well. We won’t need to tax if people continue to support our events/fundraisers. Although, that’s simply not the case right now.

Tom080 wrote on 6th August 2020, 02:07 PM:

Another suggestion: Make firearm payments go into the imperial bank. This will be helpful considering the excessive conflict through wars and crimezone at the moment.

This is another good idea. We’ll jot it down and have a discussion about it.

Thanks for your ideas. Contact me on Discord if you have anything else.

oldcp shouldnt try to mimic an actual economy if it lacks everything an economy has

Wolf1 wrote on 6th August 2020, 02:43 PM:

Snippet

It's never been a LOTB's job to generate gold for the Bank. Their job has always been mainly to manage rank Payments, and other stuff if they choose to do stuff.

Julian perfectly said it:

julianhak wrote on 6th August 2020, 04:42 PM:

oldcp shouldnt try to mimic an actual economy if it lacks everything an economy has

This is outrageous! I CAN'T stand this news. PLA fully supports the south, is allied and willing to defend every single user from there for free, but also protecting Empress Raindrop, Damen, and Majorhalo personally. And now they want to charge us even thou we did for free and expect nothing in exchange! I'm not paying a single cent until there is some recognition and appreciation of the work we do for everyone and from the South Rulers. Which we give our lives for!

yes

bruh pretty sure the money on damen's account were military payments lolll

Loki wrote on 6th August 2020, 02:00 PM:

Changing the percentage rate after a certain amount of gold isn't a good idea either, people will just transfer part of their gold to their alts to get out of paying a higher tax rate.

i say execution for tax evasion

tax is a thing on that penguin game? lmao