Well, I'm kinda for being able to indidualize taxation/tributes. Anyone have any thoughts?

This would be a great addition, more specific control over taxes would be a really neat thing.

Sure, I have a few thoughts.


As I mentioned in the original thread that brought this to discussion, I'm really not happy with the idea of giving a crewleader virtually complete access to another user's wallet. While it sounds great on paper while reading through a dozen posts about how it can be used to reward members, the basic underlying feature is that you're allowing another user to directly control how much your crimes go to them on an individualized basis. The current tax system is across the board, which works nicely since the burden falls on everybody, and thanks to the power in numbers, it probably contributes to tax rates not being raised to insane amounts. Even so, it's unrealistic in the sense that there's not much an individual can do to keep some of their earnings private - anyone with access to a crew page can do the math and figure out the discrepancy between someone's earnings and what (should) be in a user's pocket. But, creepy, all-seeing-eye aside, I digress.


The game has more often than not given crewleaders more power than is necessarily warranted over their members. Not even the government sets tax rates on certain individuals - they tax in groups based on their status. In that sense, rank-based custom tax brackets would be more ideal than allowing a crewleader to pick and choose which member pays what rate. If you're set on the idea of giving someone this kind of access, please include some kind of safeguard that can prevent it from being abused.

Ralph I'm sure it's possible to put a check in place that stops the tax being 20% above the main family tax rate to prevent abuse.

I'd be perfectly fine with that.

I believe this will bring a lot of new ideas that could be branched off of, such as crew competitions for earnings and little cool ideas for CL's to use at their disposal.

I'm always for anything that can help the members be more active, or give them a morale boost of some sort during a down time, or even a war time :).

I think it would be great to be able to individualize. Mainly because as a CL I've had donation contests that have failed, yet there were a very good small group of individuals who gave everything they had and I couldn't reward them in any other way than giving some if not all of their tributing back to them. Had the individualizing been in place I could have given them a tax free day or two as a reward. I do not think it would be abused as you suggested, but definitely used in a much more positive light.

I believe having the ability to individualize peoples tributes and such would be a great idea, it can help utilize some personal thanking towards a certain earner. As PC-Cassiopeia said, I don't think this would be abused, therefore I am down to see how it goes :D.

Are we ready to take a vote on this?

I think we need some feed back from the coders into how this change will affect the tax values in the crew information area as some people choose who to joined based on tax.

People really join crews based on taxes? Well, I suppose there could be a general tax that gets advertised, with some variation amongst members... which is pretty much what was proposed. 

You could make it so that individual tax cannot be raised above the level of the general crew tax. That way there's no chance of singling people out negatively and the information currently shown on the crew page would show the highest amount you could be paying in tax, so people could still use the tax level method as a way of working out who to join.

I am really not overly a fan of this idea so far.

It seems quite a punitive way to punish someone.

Ralph, the fact that this is a mafia game kindof negates the 'fairness' aspect of it in all honesty. I've discussed this with a few crewleaders out there and the general take is that it could be used both as a punishment or a reward. As you can notice, rank demotions aren't REALLY commonly used for punishment because it may punish the member but it doesn't help the crew. What do you think would happen in real life if you cost your mob boss money? You think he's going to make it so you can earn less money for him? No, your tax would go up :/ I think this could be a great tool for that. By the way, I don't know what country you're from, but the US certainly doesn't tax everyone the same uniform percentage, it's actually a common debate as to who should pay more or less, so i'm not exactly sure what you're getting at??

On another note, a 'tax free week' is commonly a reward for an earning competition/drive. The sad part is, you have a handful of people that earn massive amounts, and then the rest reap the benefits of no taxes at all the next week. Another thing about this is that you can have some more 'meaning' behind the ranking system. 

{people bitch and moan on a daily basis that ranks don't mean anything, the least we can do is start allowing people to tax higher ranks at a lower rate}

Also this could be used for other things like when a person has gained bodyguards - these require upkeep, it would be a great idea to be able to lower or get rid of taxes on individuals like this so that they can afford their upkeep.

Well yes I believe that punishments are, in fact, meant to be punitive - don't quote me though I'm unsure

The blanket excuse that this is a mafia game has no bearing on your argument - from a gameplay perspective, giving another user the possibility of having complete power over your money-making potential doesn't make much sense. From a roleplay perspective, the entire idea of being able to automatically tax somebody a perfect amount of their earnings would be an impossible task to accomplish factoring in several dozen members in seven cities - much less an individualized rate. Punishment wise, a crewleader can (and they do) simply fine their members a large (even gargantuan) fine amount for errors that don't quite deserve death but are serious enough to add cash into the equivalent.

{On a semi-related note, I never implied that the US (where I live, by the way) taxes everyone at a uniform rate - I said that they tax people depending on what group they're in, which is the idea I was getting at in the original thread - group tax rates are fine. No one person (and that counts for every country) is singled out and taxed individually at a special rate by a government because it's impractical and nearly impossible to enforce.}


I'd be fine with individualized tax rates entirely if it was safeguarded so that a crewleader couldn't raise it above their normal rate by crazy amounts. As Flash-Fire pointed out, a 20% maximum above their normal rate would be fair enough.

I like that you're trying to make it so people can't be singled out, but what is to stop the crewleader raising his 'normal tax' to 80%, then dropping everyone else's taxes down to single out one person?

I'm not saying that anyone would do that, purely a 'what if' question.

If the margin is within 20% of the highest tax rate, I guess that'd be fine, (If someone's taxing a crew that high, I honestly think the Loyalty feature introduced a while back should start playing a role in how much a crewleader is making) although you could just calculate the average tax rate and adjust the "singled out" member's rate accordingly, I'd imagine.

I'm going to go ahead and set a vote for this. I don't see the admins putting any limits on it, as there are currently no limits stopping them from taking advantage now. I really only see a positive outcome if this was to pass as I've heard several CL's say, "Man I wish we had individualized taxing so that I could give my good hard earners a few tax free days." I have never heard a CL say, "Man I wish we could individualize taxing so I could tax that lazy ass in my crew 90%."

I'm guessing the reason why there's no limits to stopping them now is that it's almost feasibly impossible to sustain incredibly large tax rates on a large group of people for long periods of time - mob justice will eventually become a problem. I'm honestly not factoring in crewleader's opinions on this nearly as much as the average user - this feature deals with other people's money, not theirs. I think most of us are in agreement that it's a generally good idea to have a customized tax rate based on performance or what have you, but at the same time I'd still rather not introduce a feature that A) has the potential for people to selectively abuse, and B) cedes more player control to a crewleader. There might be nothing but happy intentions for this feature from the people currently in power, but you're still leaving a window open to it being used nefariously, so why not prevent that scenario from happening entirely?