RoE Development > Regent Guide

Taxation and collection

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DM B:
I'm not entirely satisfied with the way income is generated and distributed.

I think I'd like to see province levels generate somewhat more money that previously.

Primarily to give an incentive for keeping tax rates high - this is lost money if taxes are low (but prosperity high).

Currently it better to have less tax and high prosperity than high tax and average prosperity.

X-Osoerde (Alan):
Is the intention for every holding type to benefit from the income/collection increase?

X-Haelyn's Aegis/RK (Andy):
Err, why would high taxes be a good thing?  All that taxes do is take money from producers and give it to consumers - moderate tax and high prosperity surely should be far more productive for the province as a whole than high tax and moderate prosperity?

The aim of a competent ruler is to levy low to moderate taxes while taxing the widest possible base with minimal corruption and wastage.  A good ruler would then invest the surplus to generate future wealth but that was rare in medieval times.  High taxes are the sign of a failed leadership or dire need and should be a temporary measure at best, likely only during times of war when the populace can be persuaded to pay due to the overall gains to be won or risk of loss if the ruler can't defend them.

What is the intention?

In mechanic terms high taxes act mainly used to create a larger gap between the income of rulers and other types of regents and discourage non-rulers from co-operating with law holders - if that's the aim then taxes are certainly one way of doing it, but if the aim is to increase income from province levels then it doesn't seem the way to go since at best it just shifts money around.

DM B:
It's not a radical change: It is an adjustment.

I want it to be a real mechanical dilemma: Do I go for higher taxes now and gold right in the pocket, or can I live with a lower tax and in time manage a higher prosperity?

Currently there is no real reason - except I've stated that the Anuirean cultural norm is heavy taxes (severe is the emergency tax) - to have anything higher than Moderate taxes.

But if I slightly increase the income from direct province taxation a ruler/law holder (presumably with few other holding types to his name) would be tempted to keep taxes at a Heavy ('normal' level).

X-Haelyn's Aegis/RK (Andy):
OK, I misunderstood your earlier comment about raising province level income (it's just law holder income you are referring to) and the name applied to the tax rate is throwing me - you are calling "heavy" what I'd call "moderate", it might be worth re-labelling the tiers because "fair" and "moderate" sound like the "normal" levels rather than being very light levels, that's only a problem for newbies though I guess.

In my mind a good ruler should be able to get both - levy moderate taxes and agree for support / gifts / etc from their domain regents - so both the income and the long term growth.  Of course that assumes that everyone will work towards a common good  ::)

On a mechanic side it will make existing agreements to low / no taxation more valuable so these might need to be re-considered as renegotiating with a temple (the usual beneficiary) can be a RP issue.  That said it's a tweak not a leap from 40-50% so I don't see a big problem.

As a note, law holdings are already the "best" holdings - I'd suggest looking at their cost / action DC's as they can easily generate twice the income of any other holding type if tax rates hit the 40-50% range.  Unless of course the aim is for everyone to fight over them!

On a RP side though, it makes severe tax seem more "normal" - if everyone is normally heavy then severe is the boeruine/etc type "normal" and severe is routine for anyone in a war (which is much of the time) with crippling then fairly common during times of duress.  I note that it also appears a very heavy "norm" - tax rates of 10-20% were typical until the last couple of centuries, although that was based on income rather than surplus, it does however make expansion fairly irrelevant for non-rulers if the ruler creams off the bulk of any profits from the non-ruler's efforts - I'd expect the ruler to be expected to contribute towards any growth action by a local non-ruler since they will get the bulk of the benefit so non-ruler activity might reduce significantly unless they can grab law holdings.

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