Help:Taxes
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Local Taxes
All taxes are collected locally, i.e. within the individual region, but the tax day is realm-wide. On tax day, the taxes collected in the local tax offices are split up and distributed. Every local lord decides how much
of his tax income is:
- sent to the realm
- sent to his duchy
- distributed to his knights
- kept by himself
Lords can not change region taxes entirely at will. The administration needs
time to adjust, so region taxes can only be raised or lowered by a few percentage
points per day.
In addition to the official taxes, region lords can also levy an additional, unofficial tax.
These are hidden from the remainder of the realm, and the peasants dislike them even more than
the regular taxes. But since the taxes collected this way go directly into the lord's pockets
without anyone being the wiser, many lords make use of them.
Realm Taxes
In addition to local taxes, there are also realm-wide taxes. Different from the
local taxes, these do not generate income, they only re-distribute it.
The Property Tax is a tax on monetary posessions of all nobles
within the realm. The tax rate itself is the percentage of gold and bonds that
is going to be taxed, while the limit allows the banker to tax only wealthy
people - everyone who owns gold or bonds below this limit is not taxed. Gold
and bonds are checked separately, so if the limit is 100, a noble might
not pay taxes on his 85 gold, but he will pay taxes on his 150 bonds.
Realm Distribution
BattleMaster's tax distribution system allows the banker of a realm a
great deal of freedom. The basic principle is that weights are set among
multiple categories, and these determine how much of the realm's taxes
every member of the realm receives. At tax day, all shares are summed up
and everyone receives a part of the taxes according to his number of
shares.
Everyone gets 1 point automatically, so everybody should get at least a tiny
share of the tax income.
The "Unaligned" share is your way to get money to those nobles who have
not sworn oaths to any lords. Depending on how your internal realm politics
work, this might be a few or many. One thing to remember, however, is that
all new characters will start as unaligned, so a few points in here would
be a good thing for newcomers.
Everyone else should receive taxes from the local tax collection, either
as a local lord or as the knight of a local lord. For most nobles,
the realm taxes are simply an additional bonus. As such, you will usually
want to set fairly large shares for the government positions, especially
if the government members are not local lords themselves.
Some Tax Setting Hints
While the system allows for some complexity, there is no reason to use
all of the options. On the contrary, most realms will be well advised to
leave several weights at zero.
The complexity is there to allow each realm to choose those options it
needs. A well-thought out but simple distribution scheme will usually be
better than a complicated, ineffective one.
Most importantly, most of the nobles of the realm should get their main
income from local taxes and oaths. If realm tax shares are a major factor
for non-government members, something is wrong with the local tax
settings.