The Empty Treasury
Day 2,674, 14:18
•
Published in Canada 
•
by
•
by Mann551
Canada has a problem. It's called an empty treasury. Although, it isn't totally empty, it is too low to be able to fully protect ourselves in the case of war at this time. So how do we fill up the treasury more and create a more sustainable wealth which we can rely on during times of peace and war?
The main source of income for Canada is taxes. In fact, that is the only source of income into the eCanadian treasury, save for donations, which I doubt citizens would be willing to give since asking for donations of food has elicited a poor response. So therefore we must ask ourselves what the best course of action is for taking on country taxes. What are the correct levels of taxes which will encourage people to move to Canada and won't drive people away more than already happening, but at the same time allows for the most efficient inflow of currency into the country treasury?
Something that I've only put a little bit of thought into, and absolutely no research is to change the current tax levels. Two different tax levels would be applicable depending on the circumstances: at war, or peacetime.
Peacetime tax levels I feel would do well, in order of Work Tax, Import Tax, Value Added Tax, at the level of 5%, 3%, 5%. the work tax is to get some taxes from those who are working in Canada, but not an overbearing amount. Import taxes would be low enough to encourage foreign competitors to place products on the Canadian market, but still high enough to receive some money from it, and the Value Added Tax is at a level that we would get a few cents off of every product sold. I feel this would add the most to the country treasury through taxes while being the least intruding upon our citizens.
Meanwhile, during wartime, I feel the taxes should be changed to adapt to the environment, that is, they should be set to 1%, 3%, 20%. Since it is during war-time, presumably there would be an increase in the consumption of food and weapons, which means that having a higher VAT would allow more money to flow in to the country treasury. Import taxes would remain at 3%, or even possibly lowered to 1% to help keep the Canadian market filled with products. The Work Tax would be lowered to compensate for the potential increase in costs on the market, and the decreased profit margin for those who work. It could also be expected that the wage might drop because of decreased profit margins, which is why Work Tax being lowered would help people to maintain personal money supplies.
Discussion is encouraged about this. These are just suggestions on potentially more efficient ways of getting money into the government treasury.
Facebook
Twitter
Discord
Comments
Work tax is the only tax that actually brings in any real govt revenue. The other taxes don't really matter much.
I've seen it said/written before that VAT tax is the most reliable tax. I know import tax isn't to be trusted. I'm not sure though. I used the post by Goran Thrax , the third post in the thread, as a fairly large reference for these choices. http://ecan.forumotion.com/t713-taxation-discussion
Well if anyone actually gave a shit we could experiment. We could ask Rylde to lower the VAT down all the way, wait a few days, then run the experiment in reverse with a 1% Work Tax and 5% VAT. If all hell breaks loose, he can fix it again the next day. Otherwise we'd have a reasonable baseline for future (unilateral) changes.
why don't the other taxes matter?
i only buy canadian products from the market. so taxes on goods should generate some income.
Wealthier players have enough resources to WAM for their own food and weapons. I have never bought gold but I get hundreds of food and 14 q7s a day by WAM. I never need to buy from the market. If we relied on VAT tax I'd pay no tax. wAM tax means I pay about 35 CAD per day tax. Also VAT can be avoided - if taxes are too high you just move and buy somewhere else. To avoid WAMtax (work tax) you have to change citizenship - which happens when taxes are too high (see the eUS) but not at curent levels.
just one more thing:
when i compare canada prices of goods with other countries we seem too low.
Who are you comparing us to? For the larger markets and even the US with its fairly high tax rates, we're about par if not slightly higher.
I think your peacetime numbers are good but your wartime numbers would cripple our economy. We compete in a global marketplace so have no choice but to price our goods at the going rate worldwide. A 20% VAT would mean that producers would have to be able to make a profit (or, well, technically at least just break even) at 80% of the current price. Given our bonuses, this seems unlikely.
It's probably best just to leave things as they are during a war though I would consider a drop in the Work Tax, especially should we begin to lose regions and their bonuses. That might make some industries - lower grade weapons, primarily - profitable when they're needed most.
Our country is too small for VAT and Import taxes to make much of a difference. Import taxes only dissuade foreigners from selling here, so at the current rate no one abroad is selling in our market. VAT taxes can make some revenue, but I'm not so sure we have a large enough market for this to make a difference tax wise.
This leads us with the work tax. I have planned on releasing an MoF article to explain our realistic choices but I haven't had time. Long story short: I've come to the compromise of a 12% 30 day work tax.
Also, I like how I'm the only one that ever endorses these economic articles, haha.
I'm just a penny-pincher. Voting's free. Plus I don't like being so public about what I endorse anyways.
So a 30 day vacation from the gam or new CS hunt then. 12% is ridiculous eUS level.
Do you enjoy losing wars?
More than I enjoy being fu--- broke
TBH I've lost track, I don't pay attention to this crap much now. Gold buyers, both domestic and foreign, have carried Canada the last few wars. When we freed ourselves of fyrom and Croatia recently we had Iran directly and several other countries/MUs that dumped a lot of damage which was, for lack of a better word, a gift to Canada. In the past we have given others that 'gift' freely. It made the game fun and increased our foreign standing which also made for more excitement.
Since the changes to the game have killed off almost all activity people are dropping like flies.
http://www.erepublik.com/en/main/rankings-countries
The bottom 11 countries have less than 100 players left, the bottom 5 have less than 20. Serbia is the only country that still has a large group of players. I'm not sure if they are active though, probably just a bunch of 2-clickers and multies. If they were active players (and all things were equal) Serbia's 12,000 would wipe Croatia's 1,200 and we could officially call the game over with Serbs being the winner.
Do I have a suggestion or recommendation? No I don't. I often told my detractors that if they disagree with me and/or complain about what I was doing to offer alternatives. They never did of course because they had no ideas of their own. People who bitch and complain rarely do. People who have ideas are the ones we should look to for solutions, so I commend you for offering you ideas here.
I'm tired and bored of the continual BS that admin produces just to squeeze out another nickle. If those smarter than me can figure a way to salvage anything resembling a game from this site I will hang around and watch. Other than a complete revamp of how eRep is played I consider it finished.
I apologize, it appears country rankings are "Country Power" now and not the number of players. I suppose that's the new way to confuse people even further. 😮
http://www.erepublik.com/en/main/rankings-population
You're not terribly far off: 14 countries have a population of less than 200. Just under half of all countries - 34 - have a population of under 500. Canada's in 36th place - that's just two spots above the bottom half.
Best logic in eRepublik.
Increase VAT% to increase prices of weapons, so that poorer/new players can't buy as many.
Also, lower import taxes? The price of the Q7 weapon is already lower than the global price (6CC), as if we need more competition to drive the price even lower. This would be beneficial towards citizens but not suppliers. The decrease of import taxes would hurt our local businesses the most.
we could raise taxes and offer subsidies to the noobs
But this would take alot more organisation and un-needed work.
MoF or MoFA
not MoFA.... I meant MoD
Your statements seem contradictory. First you seem to support the idea that it'd be better to have lower weapons prices to the benefit of newer, poorer players then you seem to suggest that we should have economic policy designed to support suppliers and not said citizens (by not lowering the import tax rates which should theoretically lead to (somewhat) lower prices).
Personally, I think that Q7 producers need our help far less than newer players for the simple reason that they were able to scrounge up enough gold to buy a Q7 weapons company in the first place. Although clearly not liquid, a dissolved Q7 weapons company is worth 615 gold. That's a rounding error away from 140,000 cc enough for over 23,000 Q7 weapons at the current Canadian price of $6. At 20 Q7s bought a day - the non-gold buying maximum amount that can be produced daily - that's over three years worth with none of the hassle of actually running a company.
Now I wouldn't want to push people into dissolving their companies by making the whole endeavour of making weapons unprofitable but, as this is always an option, I do have less sympathy for owners. This rich, predominantly old player base shouldn't be too worried about making a few bucks more or less a day. They are, by and large, a generous group. I would hope that they continue in this way by selling their weapons for not much more than their cost to produce.
we have a country to fund.
let's come up with some positive suggestions. i'm just throwing ideas out there.
The first part of my comment was directed at Joseph Rich. As for the rest, it could be seen as supporting your ideas. Subsidies - or perhaps giveaways - would be more complicated but not impossible. If raising taxes increases revenues without driving away either producers or new players then, hey, why not? It sure seems that donations aren't working.
Beyond everything I wrote above, I think that we should strive to change the way we look at the economy. Instead of a way to make money, it should simply be used as a means to an end - which it kind of is anyways.
I mean, what's the point of money? You use it to buy weapons and food to fight (ideally for your country) and to upgrade your training centre so that you are better at fighting (ideally, since they can also be used to make money).
Other than that you can use it to try to make more money in ridiculously small amounts, to become self-sufficient (arguably not worth it for anything but food, and even then...) or there are few (other) ways you can waste it.
Almost done: if we could get everyone to agree to pool our gold together - by downgrading higher grade food companies, for example - I'm sure we'd be able to find the gold or companies to get a few people control of Q7 weapons factories in a full bonus region country while a lot of other people provided the WRM necessary.
We're no longer a big country. We'd barely need 5 dozen Q7 companies even if everyone alive was actually playing. I'd be surprised if they don't already exist in the hands of the living.