Income tax idea

[swiften]

Idea... Income tax.. take money out of the game.
This tax would be surveyed monthly.

1% for people with income under 1 mil gil
2.5% for income 1mil-10mil
4.0% for income 10mil-25mil
5% for 25-49mil
and 7.5% for 49 mil to 100 mil.
if you have mules then they would count, so you cant hide gil.

if an extra content id has a job over 30 that would count as a 2nd player and that would be taxed on its own merit.

The income tax would be auto deducted from your gil.

This would help remove money from the money supply.

[Kittyneko]

Re: Income tax idea

If you mean getting real money back, you're kinda umm.. retarded. SE would never do something like that. If you mean gil.. Then it would be unfair to noobs. HL get enough gil

[Caspian]

Re: Income tax idea

Actually the %'s make it halfway doable. You'd only lose 1 gil for every 100 you had up to 1 million gil. You couldn't do it flat rates like that though. It would have to be incremental like the way real governments do it. Otherwise someone who had 1,010,000 gil would actually end up with less money than someone who had exactly 1 million gil. Those number should theoretically be small enough to not really damage anyone and at the same time be large enough that when carried out over an entire server would have an effect. The only way around it that I could see would be to buy lots of items and equipment.

My suggestion has been to put in more items like the two subligars that can only be bought from the npc's in Tavnazia. They're each 8 million, but can be desynthed into shining cloth or cashmere thread. A few items like these for every craft would do wonders to take money out of circulation.

[Taskmage]

Re: Income tax idea

a) I hate income tax enough in real life.
b) You could still hide money by buying pricy items off the AH right before the tally and selling them back afterwards.

[swiften]

Re: Income tax idea

or it could be done by average amount of money on hand for a given period of time.

[Caspian]

Re: Income tax idea

or it could be done by average amount of money on hand for a given period of time.

Then if you made a legitiment major purchase just before the taxes, you could end up losing all your money.
I'm sorry, I'm really not trying to be a naysayer. Just trying to look at it from all angles.

[tdh]

Re: Income tax idea

Taskmage is right. There are so many different ways to get around this. A lot of us have multiple mules. If you have 10mil in gil, you could just spread the wealth around your mules, and buy high ticketed items to hide your actual wealth. It's a lot of annoying work, but people would do it in order to not have to pay this.

I agree there needs to be a better way to get gil outta the game besides the Bazaar tax, but this isn't going to do it. I mean hell, we've already found a way around the Bazaar tax. We call it Rolanberry Fields, the unofficial Auction House.

[kuu]

Re: Income tax idea

I actually think right now we're drawing too much money out of the system and the money supply is shrinking faster then it produces.

Note that money supply and the price of AH are not the same. 10 people can buy with the same dollar if you move it around fast enough.

AH as it currently stands eats millions of Gil a day and it only rises.

Income tax is actually stupid because AH tax is vastly superior in every aspect. Think of what happens if you decide not to play for a month with income tax in place.

Anyway as it stands, there is no gil producing method anymore in vanadiel to equal the massive hand that is the AH tax. Every thf would have to pop the dungeon an hour to equal the sale of 1 high price item in jueno.

If S-E are scavy enough economists they will know when to start flipping switches before the "how do you buy $2 of gas with $1 of paper money senerio"(probably a long time) which will cause hyper-deflation the reverse but just as deadly ecnonomy crash.

[Taskmage]

Re: Income tax idea

Better post:

I'm all for taking money out of the economy, but I don't think this idea would work basically for the reasons I stated. It would be very difficult to implement in reliable way and it would create animosity with the players. I have a hard enough time making gil, and even with the understanding that it would be for the good of the economy I would be unhappy if a portion of my savings just disappeared at the end of every month. Other people would be less understanding than me.

Inflation needs a more elegant solution. The Vir and Femina subligar are a perfect example. A bard interested in Sha'ir Manteel has two options: Fight Vrtra repeatedly for the necessary thread or drop 8M on a subligar for a friend to desynth. The vendor option is competitive, but not necessarily a no-brainer, and an element of risk is still involved. This measure has several important qualities that I think any serious plan to combat inflation should bear in mind.

• It takes large amounts of money out of the economy.

Obviously, the goal.

• It is a mechanism that players will participate in voluntarily.

Very important for maintaining the trust and goodwill of the player base. If you take money away from the players without their direct consent, they'll dress up like indians and throw all your tea in the harbor. Err ... >,> I mean they'll start spamming the internet and support channels with complaints about SE stealing their money. Some will probably cancel accounts. Obviously SE wouldn't want that.

• It doesn't detract from other valid gameplay mechanisms.

Specifically in this case I'm referring to crafters and NM hunters. Making NPC vendors too effective could leave crafters high and dry by setting a fixed price on a final product that undercuts the cost of the synth as determined by the free market. The subligar experiment avoids this by supplying a key ingredient rather than a final product, giving the crafter some latitude to set the final price and earn some profit. It's equally important that this desynth doesn't make Vrtra obsolete. Players who pride themselves on being able to combat the NMs and profit from the rare items they provide shouldn't have the rug pulled out from under them by another method that is hands down easier.

• It has a built-in shutoff switch.

This is the really beautiful part. As more money leaves the economy and the value of gil becomes greater, spending 8M on this desynth will become a less and less enticing option compared to the other methods of obtaining the thread. But if inflation becomes a problem again, people will think less of throwing away that much money and buy more subligar, bleeding money out of the economy like water spilling over a dam.

I hope that the introduction of this item and recipe means that SE is testing the waters in regard to this kind of approach against inflation. As Caspian said, a few of these in each craft would do wonders. I could see Damascus Ingot and Venomous Claw being good candidates off the top of my head. Making abjurations other than Libation Abjuration available conditionally from NPCs for exorbitant prices seems like a good possible move too.

I'd also like to see some valuable services start getting provided by NPCs. Outpost warping is good but not enough. What if, for example, you could rent additional storage slots at a bank, say for 2,000 gil per slot per month. If you had a mule that you used for 30 slots of storage, could could pay 60k a month and replace it. Skilling up on a slow-moving, non-stacking or otherwise clumsy synth? Rent out a few slots to put your surplus in until your AH slots clear. Fail to renew your slots before the end of the month and your goods get dumped unsurreptitiously into your delivery box.

[JeanRC]

Re: Income tax idea

just ask SE to sue ige etc and make them close down on sale of ffxi gil item account etc and ban all gil seller buyer and everything will be better.

[kuu]

Re: Income tax idea

Better post:

I'm all for taking money out of the economy, but I don't think this idea would work basically for the reasons I stated. It would be very difficult to implement in reliable way and it would create animosity with the players. I have a hard enough time making gil, and even with the understanding that it would be for the good of the economy I would be unhappy if a portion of my savings just disappeared at the end of every month. Other people would be less understanding than me.

Inflation needs a more elegant solution. The Vir and Femina subligar are a perfect example. A bard interested in Sha'ir Manteel has two options: Fight Vrtra repeatedly for the necessary thread or drop 8M on a subligar for a friend to desynth. The vendor option is competitive, but not necessarily a no-brainer, and an element of risk is still involved. This measure has several important qualities that I think any serious plan to combat inflation should bear in mind.

• It takes large amounts of money out of the economy.

Obviously, the goal.

• It is a mechanism that players will participate in voluntarily.

Very important for maintaining the trust and goodwill of the player base. If you take money away from the players without their direct consent, they'll dress up like indians and throw all your tea in the harbor. Err ... >,> I mean they'll start spamming the internet and support channels with complaints about SE stealing their money. Some will probably cancel accounts. Obviously SE wouldn't want that.

• It doesn't detract from other valid gameplay mechanisms.

Specifically in this case I'm referring to crafters and NM hunters. Making NPC vendors too effective could leave crafters high and dry by setting a fixed price on a final product that undercuts the cost of the synth as determined by the free market. The subligar experiment avoids this by supplying a key ingredient rather than a final product, giving the crafter some latitude to set the final price and earn some profit. It's equally important that this desynth doesn't make Vrtra obsolete. Players who pride themselves on being able to combat the NMs and profit from the rare items they provide shouldn't have the rug pulled out from under them by another method that is hands down easier.

• It has a built-in shutoff switch.

This is the really beautiful part. As more money leaves the economy and the value of gil becomes greater, spending 8M on this desynth will become a less and less enticing option compared to the other methods of obtaining the thread. But if inflation becomes a problem again, people will think less of throwing away that much money and buy more subligar, bleeding money out of the economy like water spilling over a dam.

I hope that the introduction of this item and recipe means that SE is testing the waters in regard to this kind of approach against inflation. As Caspian said, a few of these in each craft would do wonders. I could see Damascus Ingot and Venomous Claw being good candidates off the top of my head. Making abjurations other than Libation Abjuration available conditionally from NPCs for exorbitant prices seems like a good possible move too.

I'd also like to see some valuable services start getting provided by NPCs. Outpost warping is good but not enough. What if, for example, you could rent additional storage slots at a bank, say for 2,000 gil per slot per month. If you had a mule that you used for 30 slots of storage, could could pay 60k a month and replace it. Skilling up on a slow-moving, non-stacking or otherwise clumsy synth? Rent out a few slots to put your surplus in until your AH slots clear. Fail to renew your slots before the end of the month and your goods get dumped unsurreptitiously into your delivery box.

A lot to say, but you're wrong on a very basic principle of your arguement. This doesn't make it wrong, but it's like shooting at the target 3 lanes away.

Money printing is NOT the same as price inflation. Correlation, yes, but they are, I repeat, not the same thing.

As it stands there is very little money printing going on. We don't make millions of more gil, we make millions worth of products. I.E-> v. claw -> scorpion harness. This is called circulating Gil.

2nd point is what I just made a post above.. Money supply and the price you see on the AH are NOT the same.

In the end they are all related, yes, but don't put your x and y together and call it a day.

Just be glad S-E at least tries to play economist and not the "Yea, let's do it!". It doesn't take the brightest eco 101 student to know what will happen if you take most of the gil out of an economy. [Something akin to the y2k doomsday senerio if you're curious]

[Taskmage]

Re: Income tax idea

Alright, I understand what you mean about the claw>harness transaction, but my perceptions about the economy are based largely on the cost of basic, commonly farmed ingredients, such as crystals, onions, beehive chips, lizards skins, etc. The price of these items is not dependant on any other items, a change in the crafting or job levels on the server, nor are they derivative products. All these items cost uniformly three times what they did when I started playing a year or two ago. The same can be said of teleports, the cost of which is purely a function of the value of the player's time, which could be said to be fixed. If these baseline indicators have changed, isn't that an indication that there is significantly more currency in circulation, rather than significantly more circulaton of a similar amount of currency as you suggest?

[Manatra]

Re: Income tax idea

To take money out of the economy SE has to make a gameplay mechanic that actively drains money from everyone (Dynamis was a nice, but never enough due to the three day limit). But not arbitrarily like an income tax.

Quite frankly though, to actually solve the issue requires a reworking/reset of the economy... which is never going to happpen. Perhaps in FFXI-2 (which SE is "apparently" working on) they should probably take the WoW approach for things and have items go /EX when you equip them (this is just one of the mechanisms used to keep the economy stable in WoW). Blizzard did quite a few interesting things with setting up the economy in their game, which other companies in the MMORPG business would do well to pay attention to as, despite the influx of gold farmers, prices on items have been fairly stable over the past year while playing WoW.

(and please, do not turn this into a WoW vs. FFXI thread, I'm just stating ideas that seem to work)

[kuu]

Re: Income tax idea

Alright, I understand what you mean about the claw>harness transaction, but my perceptions about the economy are based largely on the cost of basic, commonly farmed ingredients, such as crystals, onions, beehive chips, lizards skins, etc. The price of these items is not dependant on any other items, a change in the crafting or job levels on the server, nor are they derivative products. All these items cost uniformly three times what they did when I started playing a year or two ago. The same can be said of teleports, the cost of which is purely a function of the value of the player's time, which could be said to be fixed. If these baseline indicators have changed, isn't that an indication that there is significantly more currency in circulation, rather than significantly more circulaton of a similar amount of currency as you suggest?

Not exactly. Think of how we use credit cards and banks. We have "values" associated to each good, and do a transaction at such speeds(near instanteous) such that we don't care as long as the "medium"(in this case gil) is enough to go around.

The correlation basically goes into demand and supply, where as we get richer we demand more, and "printing" restricts or promotes that.

Now to get on to your question. It is and is not. We simply all gotten "richer" and thus demand more for our work. It is also our's and S-E's fault. With each update we simply have more to do. There was no such things as ENM back then, no 70+ crafting skills, and no CoP, no many things.

It's neither good or bad, because even the best of us can't keep up with the times and stuff that shouldn't happen does...like price gouging.

To take money out of the economy SE has to make a gameplay mechanic that actively drains money from everyone (Dynamis was a nice, but never enough due to the three day limit). But not arbitrarily like an income tax.

Quite frankly though, to actually solve the issue requires a reworking/reset of the economy... which is never going to happpen. Perhaps in FFXI-2 (which SE is "apparently" working on) they should probably take the WoW approach for things and have items go /EX when you equip them (this is just one of the mechanisms used to keep the economy stable in WoW). Blizzard did quite a few interesting things with setting up the economy in their game, which other companies in the MMORPG business would do well to pay attention to as, despite the influx of gold farmers, prices on items have been fairly stable over the past year while playing WoW.

(and please, do not turn this into a WoW vs. FFXI thread, I'm just stating ideas that seem to work)

Well can't say it "works" as it's a different concept, neither good or bad, rather preference. They are just simply not as market driven as ffxi. WoW is just as bad in the high end, in terms of "price" in amount of runs.

As for game machinics...what do you think AH tax is. S-E quickly figured out that if you shove everything into AH, and then tax AH, you control the market to your ends. More and more things have been driven to the AH.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Income tax idea

Good god would we have to fill out a tax form? Will somone publish a guide to help understand how to fill out the forms? Will there be a 800 number that you call and turn old and grey on waiting for someone to answer? Maybe they'll put in a quest where the reward is a tiny computer and then they'll have some npc sell tax software!

No, thanks.....income tax once a year in real life is MORE than enough in my life!