eTaxation Machinations and Resultant Implications
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by Tiamati
Greetings fellow members of the eAmerican community,
As of late numerous articles have surfaced which raise questions the eAmerican community should consider given recent events throughout eRepublik. The regions we began to liberate under Oblige's recent term as PotUS are no longer under our control as eAmerica has been officially wiped once more.
Presently both Spain and Poland occupy states here within eAmerica as members of TWO which has recently been shown through eGov MetaData courtesy of Jack Lantos to effectively outnumber CoT roughly 2:1 in both population and resources which has lead to not only our wipe but also the current lack of battles across the eGlobe presently.
Hopefully our Executive cabinet will be able to progress in their efforts to strengthen our international standing through dialogue. In the mean time the domestic side has a less certain outlook...Currently, congress is nearly 2/3rds through their current term. Between now and the 22nd it would be vastly helpful to eAmerica to regain at least 2 but preferably 5 regions which should be maintained until congressional elections of the month. (Dates are mechanics-specified and not arbitrary) in order to secure seats within congress during its next session beginning on the 26th.
Which states to liberate should be a topic of national and congressional discussion over the coming days; including detail-oriented discussions with regarding to funding such endeavors which will undoubtedly be lively and may involve access to "reserve funding" authorized by this session of eCongress to prevent the need of a 'shadow congress' next session.
Along with these domestic concerns congress also faces pressure on all sides regarding economic matters with many eAmericans recently experiencing "tax whiplash" over the past 90 days beginning with the new and improved taxation module being implemented during the initial wipe after the 7 pronged TWO assault upon eAmerica which incorporated Work-as-Manager into the tax base for eNational Treasuries.
What is not commonly realized regarding these events is the destructive element the Work-Tax experiment would play in the congressional deliberation regarding the income tax rate, depriving the eUS not only vital tax revenue but also of Citizens loyal to eAmerica whom question the disbursement practices associated with the federal funding of specific eAmerican Military Units in non-specific ways with zero accounting thereof provided to the eAmerican Citizenry.
In effect, due to how the tax experiment conducted by the eAmerican Government effectively increased taxes for the entire community by creating a unique wage situation within a government commune as a shortcut of testing the robustness of the mechanics governing wage-tax deduction by the interface on behalf of a nation's respective national treasury. Recently, my work tax plummeted specifically due to the work tax experiment involving a 99,999 eUSD job wage which could have just as easily been carried out with a salary experiment of 9,999 eUSD. It is assumed only one such wage aberration existed though continued nominal decreases in work-tax were also noted yet again today after rollover.
With the removal of this single digit the recent decrease in the work tax rate would have been a mere 4% in tax revenue upon sunset of the work-tax experiments instead of the actual revenue decrease of more than 40% recently experienced. Such wanton experimentation with the economy of a nation facing military annexation clearly demonstrates a lack of consideration within the eAmerican meta community of others within the eAmerican community whom also comprise the eAmerican citizenry.
Had the tax rates not been leveraged to this extreme with the now-infamous work-tax experiment it is my opinion many who fled the legislative doubling of taxes from 5 to 10% would have not done so had the tax experiment been less significant in economic impact or had they been made aware by those performing the tax revenue experiment that the impact would subside once the aberration caused by the experiment elapsed within the daily average wage calculation. It is my hope that with the negative impact of the tax experiment now no longer harming eAmericans economically many will choose to reclaim their eAmerican Citizenship in the weeks to come now that taxation has returned to more reasonable rates.
While wiped it is natural for a community to re-examine its priorities. Currently most are waiting for an update from our esteemed kitteh-in-chief for an update regarding our Foreign policy efforts. I for one completely agree with PotUS Frost in his statement that we must remain able to be civil with our enemies in order to re-establish balance between Alliances and promote eGlobal economic fluidity. In many ways this most recent wipe is reminiscent of the epic clash of alliances during late 2009 usually referred to as "WWIII"
Mid Autumn has always been a period of player-base growth with the changing of seasons in the northern hemisphere; hopefully we will be able to retain our new members and begin rebuilding the eUSA to which we all remain loyal despite any disagreements we may have with one another regarding policy. Lively discourse regarding policy remains crucial to a vibrant community like eAmerica within a Social MMO such as eRepublik; together, we must decide which states to liberate as we advance into November congressional concerns over the upcoming week.
Thank you for your time while reading my perspective regarding recent events within eAmerica; as always, feel free to comment below or to Mail me directly.
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First for eAmerica!
Clarification of Wanton within the above context;
Wanton
Grossly careless or negligent; reckless; malicious.
The term wanton implies a reckless disregard for the consequences of one's behavior. A wanton act is one done in heedless disregard for the life, limbs, health, safety, reputation, or property rights of another individual. Such an act is more than Negligence or gross negligence; it is equivalent in its results to an act of willful misconduct. A wanton injury is one precipitated by a conscious and intentional wrongful act or by an omission of a known obligation with reckless indifference to potential harmful consequences.
West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
wanton adj. 1) grossly negligent to the extent of being recklessly unconcerned with the safety of people or property. Examples: speeding by a school while it is letting out students, or firing a shotgun in a public park.
Copyright © 1981-2005 by Gerald N. Hill and Kathleen T. Hill. All Right reserved..
Taxes, lack of democracy and vilification of critics. There is still a lot of work to be done before many people will consider returning.
CoT as a whole needs to start actually making countries like Croatia etc join CoT, until that happens CoT wont break down that 2:1 advantage and the balance will never return
Tiamati was kind enough to not name the President of Cyprus kemal ergenekon as the citizen who conducted said tax experiment, but I am not. kemal is not American, he doesn't live and work under the very tax system he has implemented in America; his own country has an Income Tax of 1%, an import tax of 7% on food and 8% on weapons and a VAT of 1% for food and 4% on weapons.
If the above system is good for his country, why is he advising America to have a 10% Income Tax, a 1% Import tax and a 5% VAT on everything?
.....'cause its a different country facing different circumstances?
Drew/Franklin: you have a vendetta going against Kemal?
1. Cypriot Congress reduced the work tax to 1% a month ago. Kemal became president about 10 days ago. Cyprus has about 250 player/citizens.
2. Good advice doesn't respect national boundaries. I find it useful to pay attention to Euclid, Newton, Pascal, Lagrange, Currie, Bohr, Turing, Godel, even though we don't share a common country of residence or origin.
3. Bad advice doesn't respect natural boundaries either. It comes from inside and outside the eUS. Advice can be evaluated by looking at the evidence and the proof; rarely by looking at the cover or the author.
Work Tax Reduction, may I suggest to everyone reading this article that you take a few moments and read what is being said and make your own decision....
While I agree the above mentioned individual no longer has sufficient cause to remain upon the eAmerican Economic Council said individual was not named as they were only one participant within the experiment.
If said individual planned the entirety of the experiment then it would be clear (in my opinion) grounds for dismissal from the council to create this ticking time bomb of lost tax revenue for the eAmerican Government.
By my understanding though the individual mentioned was indeed aware of the sunset effect after 30 days time yet chose to perform said experimentation as a bid for international acclaim.
Okay, you are clearly just trolling. First you say the problem is that players were paying too much and the government getting too much from this experiment. Now you say the goverment is getting too little. Finally you come up with the "international acclaim" buloney.
You are the one advertising the experiment, reminding us that some players were on the ball enough to suspect Admin was fudging the work tax payments. Some players were responsible and pro-active enough to do something concrete and ambitious about it. Okay, I get the point: good job Oblige, Publius, Kemal and government people. SO: why you complaining a month later?
BTW, the reason average wage was so high was widely known. That is clear from a reader's comment below, from the forum discussion, and from informative answers to questions posed by the curious.
I may be mistaken but you appear to be on a bit of an snipe hunt. A nice conversation nevertheless, for which I thank you.
kind regards
Trolling = accurate information those in power wish to remain unknown to the general population.
I in no way stated how much was too much nor too little; what was stated is that had the experiment been conducted with more jurisprudence eAmerican tax revenue would have not been chopped effectively in half upon the expiration of the experiment's impact upon the daily avg wage which factors into the new taxation calculation in regards to WaM.
Regarding international acclaim the bug was widely advertised at the time; and now that the effect has washed out of the calculation it is only rational to acknowledge the problems within eAmerica that the experiment caused with HOW the experiment was carried out. Had the experiment been more measured our tax revenue would have not experienced such a violent shift as it recently has.
In essence trolling is required as the legislative tax rate doubling which recent caused dozens of eAmericans to seek CS elsewhere essentially did nothing due to this experiment other than cause eAmerica to lose good people whom many respect and remember from v1.
Thank you for your perspective Oliver.
"Such wanton experimentation......"
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It was very well publicized. There was even a YouTube video of the experiment. There were articles and forum posts about it. There was much praise for it. It doesn't qualify as wanton.
One of the effects of paying an enormous wage during the experiment, was the increase in average wage. No one pays the "average wage". No one receives the "average wage". But a high average wage permits for a lower work tax rate. The reason for high average wage in the eUS was well understood by congress members debating the tax rate, having been referred to frequently.
Your work tax has recently dropped quite a bit. So has, presumably, your government revenue: six of one etc.
The lack of deducted taxes in the national treasury was well publicized yes; however the 'sunset' after 30 days was not. Experimenting with a wage nearly 5000 times higher than average when 400-500 times higher would have been sufficient deviation for experimental purposes remains wanton behavior.
For the record, many receive average wage via the job market; all of whom remain responsible eAmericans by contributing faithfully to the eAmerican tax revenue as opposed to greedy commune arrangements working for the ridiculous minimum wage of 1 CC / day.
In fact, nearly all of my own employees receive higher than average salary as I pay above job-market rates typically as I believe it is vital to promote job security as a part of any successful retention strategy.
I comment below about your likely error: any rate of experimental pay over 1000 leads to the same result. The "skew" from a 10,000 dollar experiment is likely exactly the same as from a 100,000 experiment.
I'm glad you pay your people well. I trust you understood what I meant when saying no one pays or receives "average wage".
Your use of the elastic word "wanton" seems idiosyncratic but if you are in honest error on the main point it doesn't matter.
The result would be the same from the perspective of only the country treasury; as Talos pointed out below the government was unable to spot a 2200 CC missing from the tax revenue presumably due to the timing of when the experiment had been conducted.
For the citizenry the difference in avg wage caused many to leave when the rate itself was doubled. It has also weakened our country through clinically wanton behavior as no legislative body should be exposed to an arbitrary drop in tax revenue caused by a handful of individuals not beholden to the subsequent session of congress they effectively through under the proverbial bus with this manipulative tax representation.
Ultimately those elected to govern must be rational and measured in their roles of government. That is the main point of this article and remains valid.
Did the result of the experiments hurt?
Sure.
However, consider this. If this bug hadn't been discovered by us and fixed, someone could have discovered it on their own and never reported it.
This would mean that it would be possible for a hostile force to drive up the Work Tax in another country rather cheaply, since 22,000 in taxes turned into 22cc.
So, keep up the trolling, but the temporary pain was worth the trade-off for long-term security from outside manipulation.
Regarding the "bug" the tax experiment indeed notified Plato that under absurd wage conditions the national treasury would not receive the full amount of wage-tax-withholding for wages over 1,000.
As the bug had nothing to do with said wage's impact upon the national average wage your statement "this would mean" is nonsense as it is still remains possible for any employer to repeat the "experiment" to raise the WaM taxes beyond belief as members of our own government wantonly did with how they experimented with the new WaM tax mechanics.
My point is these experiments could have been conducted with a salary of 10k as opposed to 100k which STILL would have shown up as "2250 CC vs 22cc " in your example provided above.
Again, by removing a single digit from the experimental wage would have been as effective yet only would have caused a recent tax rate deduction of 1/10th the actual deduction recently experienced.
Thank you for proving my point while mis-representing my reasoning; it is a clear example of wanton behavior.
Tiamati, you're clearly unaware of how the experiment was conducted, despite that information being public.
The amount of wage started with that digit missing, and kept increasing until it became absolutely clear that there was a bug.
Yes, it is still possible for there to be manipulation, but now it would cost far more, as 22k is far greater than 22cc. The government, of course, could manipulate it, since that all just goes straight back to the CT, but clearly they're not.
You say "wanton", but you're simply incorrect. If this was some nefarious plot, why did they stop? The money could easily be retrieved from the Country Treasury so that the cost of the experiment within our borders was always 0cc.
Incorrect; you've just told me.
No one was able to spot the 2200 CC from CT so they added the wage of 99,999 which caused the bigger reduction blip two days ago compared to yesterday's minor blip simply because they needed a bigger number to spot missing from CT.
Government incompetence remains thus no matter how much you "doth protest"
"My point is these experiments could have been conducted with a salary of 10k as opposed to 100k ..."
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And it would have had exactly the same result.
The average wage is determined by wages actually paid.
Whether you post a job/hire for 10K or 100K the SAME amount is actually paid to the employee. That is one thing the experiment discovered. Could be mistaken but that only highlights that good answers are the result of good information not grudges or speculations.
Have you tried observing the CT to see the increase rates?
Missing a bump of 2.2k is easily possible, considering how much is purchased off the ingame market place in the USA.
A bump of 22k would be unmistakable.
@oliver
No job was posted at 99,999; the wage was increased after the job offer was accepted by the specified individual.
"The average wage is determined by wages actually paid."
Correct.
"Whether you post a job/hire for 10K or 100K the SAME amount is actually paid to the employee. That is one thing the experiment discovered."
Incorrect as stated above; i believe you meant that before the wage tax withholding "fall-through" that the CT's portion of said absurd wage would have been the same. The employee had his salary deducted by the same nominal amount.
"Could be mistaken but that only highlights that good answers are the result of good information not grudges or speculations."
You are indeed mistaken as my article contained no grudges against specific individuals; merely a flawed experiment method conducted by eAmerican Meta Government which negatively impacted the eAmerican citizenry.
Good article; I wasn't up to speed on the taxation experiment.
Voted.
No taxation without representation.
Since the first comment received a vote, I will add the corollary, no taxation without an accounting and an audit trail.
The statement : "it can not be verified that", is simply the worst an auditor can write; it's worse than a 'defalcation', or 'embezzlement', at least that can be defined, quantified and the source of the funds and recipient are identifiable. A 30 day experiment with unknown amounts received by unknown recipients/perpetrators does not fit anything except conflicting duties and no accounting.
Only it's all public.
The budgets are public. Income is public and can be tracked by anyone.
The experiment was made public after the bug was fixed.
Making the experiment public before the bug was fixed would mean any foreigner could come in, and for 2-22-222cc per manipulation, drive up our average wage.
There is transparency, a lot of people just like to scream about how there isn't.
Interesting read, voted o/
I would write an article meeting all the arguments here and more, but sadly I cannot publish it in eUS. Suffice to say the following:
Work Tax Per Click = Work Tax Rate * Average Wage
Oblige's experiment increased Average Wage. As long as we have a congress, we could have always chosen to lower the work tax rate to achieve the same work tax per click. Hence the size of the wage paid during the experiment is of zero significance in regards to disrupting eUS taxation. It could have been easily brought to the old level had the congress desired so.
On the contrary, the congress found the work tax per click at 5% work tax rate even with this new artificially high average wage, and increased the work tax rate to 10%. Which completely devastates your entire point.
In addition, the reason we chose such a high number was to create irrefutable proof of the bug. How come? How did we decide the number? Simple: Whatever the wage was, the work tax to be sent to the treasury would be that wage times 5%. Choosing 456789 as the wage should have meant an instantaneous increase of 22,839 CC in the eUS treasury. Why did we aim for this number? You just need to have a look at the hourly and daily revenues of eUS:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ak438Ll3T2QBdFd0NkIxclVSei1RUjBqQkhHZEFqWXc&usp=sharing
This is hourly data. Delta USD is the hourly change in eUS treasury. As you can very well see, hourly revenue of eUS can go as high as 16,312.55 CC. Hence the need for a sufficiently high amount (22,839 CC) to prove that the tax was not being sent to the country treasury.
gg wp