How to you set your taxes

[jenferd 0]

Hi

I've tried doing a search on this and can only find vague suggestions on how people set their taxes, like I make the taxes quite high for high wealth to keep the balance right or to up taxes really high for industry to get HT in there. I'd be really interested to find out exactly what people set their taxes to, do you set them to a certain level for every game or does it depend on what type of city/region you are working on?

I tend to work on both cities and regions but always have everything in one/each city... I don't generally do the kind of thing that some people do where they have one residential with an industrial on one side and a business on another.

It would be interesting to know the actual tax rates people set for their games, what are the taxes on the city you are working on right now?

Mine I tend to keep in line with the council tax system we have in the UK but that doesn't work so well... like I'm suprised LOL


Jen

[un1 41]

When I did play SC4, I used money cheats. But when I did play it the right way I set it like this:

R$ = 9%

R$$ = 7%

R$$$ = 6%

CS$ = 9%

CS$$ = 9%

CS$$$ = 8%

CO$ = 9%

CO$$ = 9%

CO$$$ = 7.5%

I-R = 10%

I-D = 20%

I-M = 11%

I-HT - 0.5%

-un1

[jenferd 0]

I sometimes play with money cheats and sometimes not... that's interesting, I always think the more they want the more they pay, our taxes aside from income tax are based on the value of your property so the more its worth the more you pay, which generally but not always goes with income.

So is yours the other way round to encourage higher wealth people?

Jen

[Livin in Sim 83]

Hi, jenferd,

Welcome to Simtropolis.  A lower tax rate for the wealthy might work well for some.  However, I have found that if I encourage too much high wealth residential development, the lots tend to abandon due to lack of high wealth jobs.  This is because it is hard to get enough commercial demand to supply them with jobs, which are a smaller percentage of the work force than low and medium wealth, just as in real life.  It can work better in a city with a lot of high tech industry demand.  If you go this way, it would be wise to lower the commercial high wealth tax correspondingly.  But high wealth Sims tend to be more demanding, less likely to use mass transit, etc.  So I usually tax them at around 13-15% just to make up for all the hassle of trying to please them.    Tax strategy for the rest of the categories can really depend on what you're trying to encourage to grow.  In a rural area it could be agriculture and dirty industry, larger towns manufacturing, etc.  That's an interesting point about property value.  I wonder if that does increase revenue in SC4, does anyone know?  Or is the player the final authority on the percentages?

Enjoy the game.

--Liv

[ewd76 2]

Generally I just give myself  a billion dollars through the cheat and then set all taxes to 0% and then I just wait to see what happens.

[Jezus53 18]

Since America has a horrible tax system, and I am a firm believer in this idea, I have a flat tax. Everything at the Maxis defult of 9.0%. In my mind it works perfect, even in the really world it could work. I wish I could set taxes to 75% and have everything free except luxuries. But that's my personal political views.

[kronus101 0]

i just do the defaults but raise taxes for dirty industries high and taxes for high tech at about 4-7%

[edwardsw 0]

I don't usually adjust the taxes at the start but once I feel my city/town is stable, I will then influence the type of residential and commercial buildings with the taxes. The wealthier the building, the cheaper the taxes are set. And I do the same for industrial buildings, dirty - 11%, manufacturing - 8%, high tech - 6%.

(This is my usual tax layout system, however I would obviously change them to suit the style of my city tile).

[cnsimcity 4]

kan bu d

[jenferd 0]

Hi all

Thanks for the replies

That's what I'm looking at really, using the taxes to control the amount of high and medium wealth in the cities, as soon as I put in education & health care everything goes medium or above and I want to have more low wealth to get the balance right, so figured I need to set a tax rate for at least high wealth that keeps them under control... I'm also getting a lot of abandonment so pehaps some experimenting with higher tax levels as Liv suggested.

I wish our income tax was 9%! I suppose if I'm trying to build based on what I know and am used to I need to set taxes a bit higher for everyone to account for the health cover of the NHS, it seems to keep sims low wealth the healthcare needs to be pretty awful, spose I could counteract it my putting industry closer the residential to keep desirability down!?

I like to have a good mix of everything, on a regional scale I'd like to get a lot of market towns & villages with plenty of agriculture, then perhaps one big city and oneor two large borough with many suburbs. The one thing that throws me is the amount of industrial needed which seems way out of proportion to what we see in reality.

I'll try both ways and see what happens... perhaps I'll build a city with taxes unset and then make a couple copies, do one with the taxes grading up and another grading down, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Jen

[Strategist01 0]

Ok, well what i do is i work according to maxis set rules: if a tax is set to below 4%, i will get a huge demand, if its above 12% i will have a negative demand. if i don't want a certain group, usually later on in the game when i don't want poor ppl, or rich ppl, i set the poor ppl to 10%, as every 0.1%, above 9.5%, you get a decrease of 100 in demand, and the rich to about 9.8%, with med wealth commercial ( service+office) set to 7%, and Low wealth commercial set to 9.5%, and high wealth9%. for industrial i set I-D to 13%, I-M to 7% and I-HT to 3.9%. my game usually works well on those settings i let it run for ten game years, and i'm okay! i play mostly on the easy setting.

[wuen2001 0]

Usually I will keep my taxes at default 9%. When the time is right, I will reduce taxes for high wealth residence, manufacturing, and high tech industry. Then the economy is stable, I will slowly eliminate dirty industry. That's where I got stuck with high commute time and growth bottleneck.

[Jezus53 18]

Originally posted by: wuen2001 Usually I will keep my taxes at default 9%. When the time is right, I will reduce taxes for high wealth residence, manufacturing, and high tech industry. Then the economy is stable, I will slowly eliminate dirty industry. That's where I got stuck with high commute time and growth bottleneck.quote>

The way I fix that is by adding at least 3 highway connections and providing bus, subway, and train connections. My subways are always over capacity, but it really lowers my commute time from 90-100 minutes to 50-60. Still high, but better.

[Strategist01 0]

Originally posted by: wuen2001 Usually I will keep my taxes at default 9%. When the time is right, I will reduce taxes for high wealth residence, manufacturing, and high tech industry. Then the economy is stable, I will slowly eliminate dirty industry. That's where I got stuck with high commute time and growth bottleneck.quote>

 

well i generally leave the taxes alone for the firs 10 years or so, but then i adjust them to what i said, and i usually have a ton of high wealth people and industry as well as commercial, its not as much as the medium wealth, but they pay, so i'm okay! i also have avenues running around the edge of the map, as weel about 9 tiles apart from each other, in a grid formation. i also use bustops that function as subway stations, so that when my roads are too congested, i just lay a subway system, and problem solved!

[Jezus53 18]

Originally posted by: Strategist01

Originally posted by: wuen2001 Usually I will keep my taxes at default 9%. When the time is right, I will reduce taxes for high wealth residence, manufacturing, and high tech industry. Then the economy is stable, I will slowly eliminate dirty industry. That's where I got stuck with high commute time and growth bottleneck.quote>

 

well i generally leave the taxes alone for the firs 10 years or so, but then i adjust them to what i said, and i usually have a ton of high wealth people and industry as well as commercial, its not as much as the medium wealth, but they pay, so i'm okay! i also have avenues running around the edge of the map, as weel about 9 tiles apart from each other, in a grid formation. i also use bustops that function as subway stations, so that when my roads are too congested, i just lay a subway system, and problem solved!quote>

When you do that, don't you get an over crowding in your subway lines? And if you do, how do you solve that problem?

[writingliberty 0]

I just leave everything at default at first, unless I want to specifically encourage or discourage one class, in which case I will drop it to like 6% or raise it to like 15%.

After my city is highly profitable (which I usually do through design; the only "cheat" I use is a toll booth revenue multiplier) I will drop taxes across the board by 1-2%.

[Strategist01 0]

well i only lay down subway lines once i see a profusion of bus usage across the board, and also i put the bus stops/ sub stations about six blocks apart, so no one station is too crowded. if my sibway lines get too crowded, i just run a line next to it to combat that problem. i generally place a subway station on every block thats about 4x4 tiles, in one corner.bus stops next to it if i remember to. if i don't i just use one that can fit into a road.

[Jezus53 18]

Originally posted by: Strategist01 well i only lay down subway lines once i see a profusion of bus usage across the board, and also i put the bus stops/ sub stations about six blocks apart, so no one station is too crowded. if my sibway lines get too crowded, i just run a line next to it to combat that problem. i generally place a subway station on every block thats about 4x4 tiles, in one corner.bus stops next to it if i remember to. if i don't i just use one that can fit into a road.quote>

So you double up the lines? I see. That could probably help out a little. Yeah, Every time I set up subway I put a bunch of lines going to my industrial district and they all decide to use one line even if it's out of the way. Weird. I just ignore it because what do I care? I don't take it so it's not my problem they're stupid.

[jenferd 0]

well I'm trying it out, I've got one city, the main one is set to default, I've copied across the region twice and am testing out different tax levels, though the region only has one city at the moment, even so I'm still struggling with getting enough low wealth. I have though in this city put a fair wack of agri in one corner and have been putting small villages in there, they have fire coverage & are close to but not in radius of healthcare, schools & police, they seem to stay nicely low wealth but don't end up too grungy.

How does it go for range... i.e. if a house is out of range of say the local school does it mean its not covered at all or will the sims still travel into the covered area to get their education/health etc? giving them lower than average education/health etc but not a complete lack of?

Just how to get low wealth, high & medium that doesn't look the pits.. well some has to but not all low wealth looks like that!

I'm quite chuffed with this city as well, for the first time in years... and that's since SC first came out I'm actually managing a fairly decent looking city :0)

Thanks for everyones thoughts...

Strategist01 - that's interesting about subways, doubling up roads or making them bigger is obvious but never thought of that, if you double up the line do you put another station in as well, right next to the other one?

Jen

[Argon Vex 1]

Originally posted by: jenferd

I like to have a good mix of everything, on a regional scale I'd like to get a lot of market towns & villages with plenty of agriculture, then perhaps one big city and oneor two large borough with many suburbs. The one thing that throws me is the amount of industrial needed which seems way out of proportion to what we see in reality.

quote>

There are modding solutions to that problem. This quadruples the amount of industrial jobs: If that's too much for you (it is for me), there's always the industry doubler: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=15758

As far as taxes go: I usually keep everything at normal levels, except for dirty industry. It's polluting, ugly and literally devours power and water - I need 3x the power in a DI industry city instead of a MI city. So I set dirty tax to 16%~20% and keep the rest on default. That usually gives me enough cash to run my city.

[Strategist01 0]

Strategist01 - that's interesting about subways, doubling up roads or making them bigger is obvious but never thought of that, if you double up the line do you put another station in as well, right next to the other one?quote>

well as i usually have lond line running parallel to each other to save money, i would usually put a line across them all where i saw that most of the subway traffic converged it usually clars that up. if that doesn't work, i would put i line next to it, attach it at both ends to the line that is congested, and to feed into it, i would skip two tiles from the nearest subway station and add a line that branches into it, usually diagonally, for best flow.

[jenferd 0]

Argon Vex - There are modding solutions to that problem. This quadruples the amount of industrial jobs: If that's too much for you (it is for me), there's always the industry doubler: https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=15758

quote>

I found the doubler yesterday, the industrial levels seem much more realistic, i've also tried taxes at 12% for dirty industry and they don't seem to complain too much about it.

Jen

[zwr100 2]

For my CBD: R$ 9.1, R$$ 9.0, R$$ 8.9, and commerce basically the same, with no industry in the CBD.

For the adjacent dirty/manufacturing low wealth cities I basically do the opposite, but taxing the $$$ and HT very heavily.

For the adjacent HT cities I put HT at 8.9 and other industries at 16+ (they're nothing but HT).

[Kahara 0]

I usually set them all to 0% - as incentive...

[Strategist01 0]

Originally posted by: Kahara I usually set them all to 0% - as incentive...quote>

 

I wouldn't do that...if you set it to 0% you will get a huge demand...but at a price. when you run into financial trouble, if raise ur taxes to where you are making money, then you wil see a HUGE drop in demand...rather leave the taxes alone and let everything develop on its own. If you want to increase a wealth group, set it to 4.9%, and if you want to discourage a group, set the taxes to 12%, and that usually discourages/incourages them...

[Kahara 0]

Originally posted by: Strategist01

Originally posted by: Kahara I usually set them all to 0% - as incentive...quote>

 

I wouldn't do that...if you set it to 0% you will get a huge demand...but at a price. when you run into financial trouble, if raise ur taxes to where you are making money, then you wil see a HUGE drop in demand...rather leave the taxes alone and let everything develop on its own. If you want to increase a wealth group, set it to 4.9%, and if you want to discourage a group, set the taxes to 12%, and that usually discourages/incourages them...quote>

Yes, when I do this alot of building become abandoned. I have not ran into "financial trouble" yet but I see where your coming from. Thanks for advice.

[ewd76 2]

OR you can just cheat like I do. I set all taxes to zero, but I give myself unlimited funds so that it doesn't matter. I have happy Sims.

[Kahara 0]

I bet you do. But its one of the challenges of the game and with said challenges the game becomes boring.

[ewd76 2]

Unfortunately, I have never been able to get a city going without it. I do miss SC 2000 and 3000, where you could just plop a zone with a road and a dam and make money. It was not at all uncommon to make several hundred thousand per turn around.

This cheating is actually pretty realistic, if I need funds I just give myself a bailout.

[rewright 804]

I start my cities with the rates below, and once I get a little development I check all the services. There is a little lot that each gives you $5000/month and I plop two or three to begin with. My coffers fill up pretty fast. This seems to produce cleaner cities.

R$ = 4%

R$$ = 4%

R$$$ = 3%

CS$ = 3%

CS$$ = 3%

CS$$$ = 2%

CO$ = 3%

CO$$ = 3%

CO$$$ = 2%

I-R = 1%

I-D = 20%

I-M = 2%

I-HT - 1%