Taxes-how to use them?

[slash_hudson 0]

 Do I need to use taxes to get + profit from my city?Can you give me some tips about them?How much to raise and what to pay attention?

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I actually don't bother with taxes, I leave them alone.

I don't know exactly how the mechanism works, but supposedly if you lower the taxes, demand in that category will increase. But you can't avoid dealing with the RCI balance by lowering taxes.

The only time I mess with taxes is with dirty industry. If you develop dirty industry, you can raise taxes to the max, and they won't abandon! And at the same time you'll make huge amounts of money from them. That's sort of cheating though.

[Munchiez 74]

If you make taxes at 0% for high industry tons of hgih rises will pop up in your city and when they settle you can raise taxes to like 5%

[Jasoncw 11,949]

yeah, but even if you get those high rises, the RCI mix still needs to rebalance itself, so it's only a short term gain until you develop more R, which brings the mix back up to what it would have been if you had just left the taxes alone. I think it's better to focus on the long term development of the city rather than fiddling with short term tax adjustments.

[slash_hudson 0]

Thanks for answers.

[+Guest]

I use my taxes along with the increase commercial ordinances mod. It set all commercial rates at 3%, and all residential rates at 2%. I also set all my industrial rates at 20%, since I don't like industrial zones. I then run the city, and wait til I start making a $20k-$50k monthly profit, then I begin to lower taxes. This greatly increases demand. I usually end up with a 0.2%-0.5% resident rate, and a 1.2%-1.5% commercial rate, with a population of usually 250k-300k

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I don't use any mods that affect demand.  The game is skewed too much by them.

However, I definitely use my taxes panel to control demand in some ways.  I have some nasty habits that are pretty arbitrary as far as the game goes.

First, I start out with everything on default.  9%.  After four years or the city goes profitable, whichever comes first, I up the I-D tax rate to 20% stopping any further I-D development and profiteering on them while they last.  They will eventually abandon or be replaced.  At the same time, I drop the farm taxes to 7%, and if there is enough profit, I drop everyone else 20 basis points (0.2%).  This gives a little push to the demand.

Using the demand graph as a graphic set of building permits, I proceed for a while.  If there becomes too big a spread in income vs. expenses, I drop the taxes again, which spurs more demand, and so on.  I have one city with the taxes at 5% and I am still making over 10,000 a month.  It is embarassing, as everybody is happy, and my maryor rating is around 98%.  I tweak this city, once in a while, to cause some minor disruptions with a view to increasing my regional population wich is getting pretty close to 1,000,000 now.

Overall, I have a successful transit system between variious tiles on this region, but there have been loops developing.  I kill these mercilessly by finding the source of the loop and bulldozing it into submission.  Frequently the cause is a ferry, as there cities can be connected by water.  Sims seem to like water voyages, because they will most often swamp a ferry.  Also, watch out for subtle thngs like rail/monorail loops.  The Sims are really good at that, and this is one of the bugs that needs fixing.  When a Sim goes to work, he should arrive and stay there for 8 hours, not ride round and round because he can.  A bunch of lazy bums if you ask me.  About the only thng I haven't tried is raising fares for classy transport like the monorail which can be done using the NAM controller.

[+Guest maxxxsmooth]

That's what's up! I forgot to mention my transit system. I have a regional railway, and regional el system. I'm planning on connecting the smaller subway systems I have and expand that into a regional one. and i'm thinking about regionalizing the bus system. the current bus system only serves the core city (w/ a pop. of over 2.4 million). right now my regional pop. is over 8.4 million.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

This is where one careless move will get you the dreaded transit loop, so go carefully and with some suspicion when it comes to intercity transport. If you create a loop (the transit loading map goes red on some routes) just break it at some point and see if it cools. It might take a little chasing down.

I try to keep my intercity transit in a tree and avoid return loops wherever possible. Beware of car ferries.

[+Guest maxxxsmooth]

Oh yeah I'm very careful. I want to promote regionalism, which is what Metro Detroit desperately needs right now. I've never used the car ferries. I use water taxis, but no ferries.

[Unassigned 23]

Water taxis (such as the Goldiva ones) can be part of Eternal Commuter loops (or so I believe).

[jdenm8 362]

As far as I know, the Goldiva water taxis ARE ferries.

But, this thread is about Taxes. Personally, I don't touch tax rates until I want R§§ and R§§§ where I lower them to 2% due to the CAM bug and slowly inch them back up to about 3.7%.

Commercial and Industrial I usually leave untouched.

Also, I don't build Civil Services (Police, Fire, Education, Hospitals) until the city can completely afford it.

[+Guest maxxxsmooth]

I'm not in front of the computer that I use for SC4, but I think I used the wrong term (water taxis). I know it acts like a ferry, but so far, I haven't had any looping problems. I guess because I don't have a lot of them. I have a very few of them.

Jdenm8, you said you don't build city services until your city can afford them. Yeah that's one approach to it. Personally, I don't do it that way. Usually, I build the city services first, while I still have the money for it. Then I zone high density residential and high density commercial. Then I adjust residential taxes to 2%, commercial to 3%, industrial and agricultural to 20% (since I don't want those in my region). Then I let it run for 2 or 3 sim months, then I pause it, and enact all the ordinances. Then I just let her run. Things grow like wildfire, and by the end of the first year, my cities are turning profits. That allows me to build all the rewards I want, etc.

IMO, I think one of the ultimate goals of the game, besides making the citizenry happy, and having huge cites, is to turn a profit. Just my two cents folks......

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I use taxes to further my initial goal, which is to get a new city in the black. After that, I try to stay in the black while enhancing conditions for the Sims in the region. My general approach is to leave everything on default for about 4-Sim years, supplying schools and fire protection as needed, and pushing development to pay for them. Around year 4 I up the rate on I-D to 20% which stops development and harvests them until they are gone. I find I can generally lower taxes slowly to increase general demand. I try not to have tax differentials. This usually works, and I generally keep balanced cities.

I've just installed the SPAM to we'll see how this affects things. The disappearance of I-Ag demand has always been something I didn't like.

[WDragon 8]

u can set tax at a rate 9.0 $ 9.1$$ and 9.3$$$ at the beginning of the game

rise the tax later in game if income goes negative.

[+Guest maxxxsmooth]

Let me know how that SPAM thing works out. I keep hearing about it, but I just want a simple explanation of what exactly it is.

[Firman Maulana 2]

if you raise taxes. you can raise profits or increase the level of demand of the building they want to build in your town.

Example: if you raise taxes for dirty industries and lowering taxes for high tech industries you will raise demand for high tech industries.:read:if now you understand?

Please give your comments at my profil.