Taxes in Player Owned Towns

I just did a search in this forum and was shocked to find not results for "Tax". I was wondering a few things:

Are POTs are taxed by the game(considering the price I hope not)?
Are lots in a POT taxed by the game(seems reasonable but leaves the town with no way to collect for its own public services)?
Can POTs tax lots?
Can POTs 'kick out' bad players from a POT lot(through an in-game notice that gives them X time to move out or something)?

I'm surprised I cant find anything on this.

 

If you buy a POT in the add-on store it's not taxed by the game. It may be taxed if you acquire it via in-game gold.

If you own the town you can tax players by saying "give me gold or I'll throw you out of the town". That's a manual process.

The reason you can't find anything on this is because current town owners are telling everyone "We will never tax you anything! Come join our totally free town!" Which may or may not be the reality once this game starts to go live.

 

Hi Sir Tim...

POTs are not taxed if purchased from the Add-On Store. In game gold purchases of POTs are taxed.
Lots in the POT are taxed based on the lot. If it's a tax free lot, no. If it's a taxable lot, yes.
The owner of a POT can tax lots if they desire.
The owner of a POT can kick anyone they desire off the lot they have inside the POT. I'm not sure about a notice etc...but the owner of the town has the authority to allow or disallow people to live there as they see fit.

Hope this helps

 

Exactly correct and concisely stated.

 

Drocis is mostly correct although his last point is slightly over-dramatised. ;-) There have been some discussions on tax, but given that ALL POTs are from the add-on store then we know the game isn't going to charge us a tax. Therefore we don't force a tax on to our residents. Whether setting up a tax fund is a good idea is perhaps another question. As we can all expect, players won't play in a town which is taxed unless they think their tax money is well spent. Just like real life, except we can't legally jail / kill you if you don't comply (no need for anyone to be cute and pedantic here). ;-)

Baldrith's answers are pretty much spot on. Although we don't yet know if POT owners will have a system for charging tax (I haven't heard anything but it is something which could be implemented).

 

A murky topic if I've ever seen one. Still, I'd be surprised if a tax system WASN'T worked in to the mechanics somewhere!

Ultimately, I imagine POT taxes will revolve around three primary factors. 1, how much gold the landlord fancies, 2, what sort of running expenses are incurred through both the government and key services and 3, how corrupt the government is. To be quite honest we're still a LONG way away from release, so running costs (2) are a bit of a black hole. Probably best avoiding the other two factors by getting to know POT options and finding a POT group that seems somewhat legitimate.

 

Star Wars Galaxies and Shadowbane had player owned towns. There were a number of expenses, if I recall correctly, things like NPC guards, trainers, and vendors.

I think we could see things like this in Shroud of the Avatar, in fact I'd be very surprised if this didn't exist as a gold sink. We'll see. But as Duke Vallas points out, this information is scarce right now so it's not something any town owner could answer definitively. We'll probably know a lot more about the details in February.

Until then, anyone claiming they will have zero taxes is being very optimistic about their ability to provide basic services, in my opinion.

 

Portalarium has come out and said that if a POT owner wants to charge a tax then that is between the owner and the renter. They will only track the normal taxes for lots/houses as it pertains to the add-on store purchases. Of course that policy can be changed.

 

Given that RM houses and POTs have no stated taxes then I wouldn't assume that will change. I can't see any civic buildings, provided by the game, as costing anything.

The only place that I can foresee tax being spent is on player-run events. E.g. I'm organizing a huge party and need 1000 torches for gifts. In order to cover these expenditure I request a tax from my townsfolk.

 

I'm thinking that anything purchased outside of what's provided from the original purchase will have taxes. So if you have a GIANT Metropolis that comes with a variety of NPC's, that might not be enough to actually support the town. Will it have enough guards and vendors and NPC color? Well there's always the add-on store, so you can go buy more! But those NPC's will cost you something in-game to maintain, at least that's my guess. We'll see.