Mux walks out of his HQ, looks left, looks right. He hadn't been outside in days. He heard some asshole named TylerDurden was on the loose, so he stayed all locked up. Apparently he leads this army of zombies against the good-hearted people of Our Thing. Whatever. He heard the coast was clear, so he decided to have a look outside.

To his surprise, the streets were booming. People were running everywhere, telling stories, having competitions, and GodMother Kates was even opening up some event in New Orleans. He'd have to look into it later, as he had some business to attend to.

Alright. I haven't been out here in a while, and yes, I am looking rather pale. Despite my rather comical appearance, I come to you today with an matter of absolutely no importance.

Yes, it has no importance whatsoever. Kinda odd, eh? A Consigliere (yes, consigliere) comes to the streets to discuss something that hardly matters. Well, prepare yourself.

I set up my crew a couple weeks ago, and have since built up a small empire. I'm not here to boast anything, I actually bring a discussion to the table. You see, my crew doesn't operate on these "taxes". Taxes are for the government. I don't like the government. So, I have had my "taxes" set to 1% or 0% since I've been set up. You want to know why? Because I want to keep organized.

The way I see it, everyone makes a different amount of money, per day, per week, whatever. So, by using a general xx% tax, you get a good amount of whatever they make. Yeah, that sounds great until you get slowpokes who decide they'll wait a few days to start earning. Well, that doesn't fly with my family, and certainly not with me.

So, I decided to try something a little different. I talked it over with Serotonin, and we decided to keep taxes low (to monitor profits), and require a certain amount of cash from each of my members for their protection. The rest, they keep. Everyone knows what's expected, and the consequences when those expectations aren't met.

So, I come to you all with a little inquiry. For those of you with crews/families, do you think your family is at its maximum efficiency with "taxes"? Those without crews, how would you run things?

The_Liar has in no way just sent Mux a letter about this.

Nor does he approve (for different reasons) of this approach.

Low taxes do not enable a leader to see who actually gives a crap about the family and donates rather than just being taxed to the point of ridiculousness and considering themselves done...

The Liar does not lie.

Im no crew leader (mayhap one day, fingers crossed), but I've been thinking about this very subject recently.

Now first, forgive me if I sound disrespectful to anybody, but this is just my opinion:

Perhaps if I ran a family I'd either have a high or medium sized tax, but ask my members to not make any direct donations to me, and to keep what they've earned. The problem with this though is that the more active earners would be the ones who stand out more. This may be a good thing, but I wouldn't like to hold people back just because of a lack of availability.

The other way I was thinking was to possibly charge no tax at all, like you Mux, but require donations of some size, (perhaps a % or set amount each week dependant on rank or drug bags). The problem with this however would be the constant amount of work required to monitor such information of each and every member and then enforcing it.

So I suppose I should consider myself lucky I'm not a Crew Leader, as matters such as these are way over my head. I wish you luck and give you congradulations on moving away from the norm however Mux.

Michael tips his hat and leans against a post waiting for others to respond.

I may not be a Crewleader,in fact,I don't ever plan on it,I'm not the leading type,but here's my two sense.

If I were to run a Crew, I would run it Similar to Mux,here. Maybe a 5-10% tax,and a weekly donation,depending on the quantity/quality of members. For instance,if I were to have 10 members,donations would be much higher than if I had 30 earning for me. But as Mr Brizriole has stated, "The problem with this however would be the constant amount of work
required to monitor such information of each and every member and then
enforcing it." 

So,I'm not sure,when the time comes,if and when I ever get a crew of my own,I will find a way.

I have seen organizations that have run similar to this before and it has been fairly successful.

There are both benefits of this sort of system and also drawbacks.  I believe the benefits of the system is that you can ultimately decide how much you will bring in each week if every member pays the tribute in full.  This can lead to more money coming in than would normally come in from setting taxes and receiving no donations.  This method requires people to run and gives responsibility to more people which can empower them and encourage members of the crew.

The drawback is that it does require a lot of people to run and the work is more than 1 person, especially a crewleader with all of the other responsibilities attached to such a position, could handle.  Another setback is that you must decide what consequences there will be if someone doesn't pay their tribute and these consequences must be followed through otherwise dissention may build within the crew.

Ultimately, if you have the people to run this method and have the means to deal with those that do not pay the tribute then this system can potentially benefit an organization further than a taxation method might.