Tax the rich?

Tax the rich?

Sburbine
IIHF Federation Head
That boy ain't right

#31

05-01-2025, 03:05 PM

Really makes you realize how fucked up real life billionaires are when you're earning millions of dollars filling out check boxes in Google forms and still aren't even close

Lime
Simmer
ahoy ladies

#32

05-01-2025, 05:32 PM

05-01-2025, 12:46 PMPuppy Wrote: Great idea, looking forward to seeing this done so we can open the door to more big ideas, like paying accurate rent and cost-of-living in corresponding SHL cities where the users player plays.

When we get to that and other things like credit card debt, insurance, and equipment costs, I think we'll all be one step closer to making the sim world feel more like the real world.

is it finally time to turn injuries back on?

jackkmart
Registered
Senior Member

#33

05-01-2025, 09:05 PM

05-01-2025, 05:32 PMLime Wrote: is it finally time to turn injuries back on?

So long as I can sit on the board of a simulated health insurance company

Mutedfaith
Registered
singing solo you can't hear him

#34

05-02-2025, 10:46 AM

Why tax just @Rich, when we can tax @luke as well!

Duff101
Registered
The Gaptain

#35

05-02-2025, 12:39 PM (This post was last modified: 05-02-2025, 12:40 PM by Duff101. Edited 2 times in total.)

05-01-2025, 01:41 AMjackkmart Wrote:

From the office of the SRS.

First, some useful acronyms.

SRS - Simulation Revenue Service
BVpA - Bank Value post Adjustments
TBV - Taxable Bank Value
GBV - Gross Bank Value
TPE - You should know this one
TTE - Total Taxable Earnings
GRP- Gross Revenue Pool
ERP - Effective
SoS - Season over Season

The title says it all. Some of y’all have way too much money, and the proletariat are getting restless. It’s time to institute aggressive taxation to redistribute the wealth amongst the working class of the site. For too long, the bourgeois have hoarded the jobs, the cards, and the cash, while penny pinching on articles, graphics, contracts, and now chirps.

Rise, comrades, and join me as we fight to reclaim the means of earning.

Now, not only does your TPE get regressed, but your fake money, too.

Is this a serious article or a bit?

How does the SRS collect?

Violence primarily.

Otherwise, this brave new system will be kick-started by instantly taxing the gross bank value of users above and within certain brackets. This evaluation will add all non-earnings related spending (card purchases) dating back at least two seasons, thus inflating some users’ TBV, ignoring non-earning related purchases within a reasonable time frame. There will be a floor instituted, however, so that a user who may have spent so much on cards that their TBV is high enough that their immediate tax adjustment is significantly greater than their current bank value. In such cases, users would be adjusted to a bank value floor of $5m, and they will be taxed at what they can currently pay, down to that floor.

This revenue will set up the SRF, or Simulation Revenue Fund, from which bonuses will be paid, as will be outlined shortly.

So for the first season of implementation, on tax day, users with TBVs as according to adjustments will be taxed based on these percentages of their total bank value.

0-24m - 0%
24-30m - 5%
30-50m - 10%
50-100m - 15%
100-250m - 20%
250m+ - 40%
1b+ - 50%

Secondly, we must institute a system of continuous and progressive taxation on earnings that is based on current bank value, not money earned, although the tax will apply to earnings.

Taxes on earnings will be based on the user’s bank value at the beginning of the relevant season. Further, this value should be adjusted down, assuming they buy the highest tier of personal training, so X being gross bank value, the relevant tax category would be based on that user’s X - Max Personal Training.

Earnings tax applies to all earnings, including bonuses paid out from the effective revenue pool apportioned by the SRS.

Let’s take a look at those brackets. Again, these are not based progressively on earnings themselves but BVpA at the beginning of the relevant earnings season.

0-24m - 0%
24-30m - 15%
30-50m - 30%
50-100m - 50%
100-250m - 70%
250m+ - 90%
1b+ - 100%

There will be no billionaire nonsense.

A typical $250m+ user might earn, say, $16m in a season, of which they would keep $1.6m, while $14.4m is paid into the SRF.

Earning at this level is essentially impossible. This is, obviously, by design. What does one even do with 100m in a single season; you can’t buy simulation real estate, or put your simulated cash into a simulated mutual fund. Not yet, anyway. (Foreshadowing?)

Where does this money go?

Back to the people, of course!

Media, job, and graphics (among other) payouts will retain their base values as they are, subject to adjustment. However, bonus pay will be paid from the total pool of revenue collected by the SRS relative to the amount of work done by users on the site, on the same season-to-season basis. Essentially, the total bonus pay to be distributed will be determined based on the total number of media, graphics approved on a rolling, season-to-season basis. Then the bonus pool will be divvied out relative to either word count, or the number and quality of graphic submitted to each relevant user, per each relevant post.

Exactly how big is the pool that is paid out from the SRF? Well, that's the complicated bit. I think it should be partially variable, and partially fixed on a basis relative to the size of SRF.

The base ERP, that is, the bonus pool that is paid out to users, should be 75% of earnings from the season, that is 0.75*Gross Seasonal Revenue. Excluding the first season, when the ERP will be determined by the SRS on a one-time basis, as part of the tax system deployment process.

Besides that, the SRS should attempt to aim for an SRF growth rate, SoS of roughly 2.5%. If the SRF growth rate on a SoS basis falls below this number, then the SRS must lessen the % of revenue apportioned to the ERP, and thus retain more money, to return to the growth rate target.

If the SoS growth rate is above said target, the SRS may apportion more funds to that season's ERP to be paid out as further bonuses, although they are not mandated to, as they are when the growth rate is too low.

So what does this look like?

Let’s take an example to help illustrate this.

Take, for instance, user B. Mr or Mrs B has $63,400,000 BVpA on tax day during the inaugural season of taxation. They will immediately be taxed $9,510,000 (BVpA * Initial Value Tax Rate = 63.4 * .15). Then, entering the first season, they are placed in earnings tax tranche 3, meaning all earnings are taxed at 50%, due to their BVpA at the beginning of said season. Let’s say, throughout the season, they write 2 articles totalling 2400 words, and submit one weekly graphic graded a 3. This earns them $4,260,000. Meanwhile, their contract and job total for a payout of $12,000,000. This brings their total seasonal earning to $16,260,000, which is taxed at 50%, thus leaving them with $8,130,000 in net earnings, with the same amount contributed to the SRF.

Then, when the books are all cooked, the SRS apportions bonuses in the following season for discretionary earnings in the previous season, according to the bonus apportionment (arbitrary, for the sake of example) of $62,000 per 100 words (for media), and $221,000 for graphics graded a 3. This earns them a further $1,488,000 and $221,000, respectively.

This, too, gets taxed but at their new respective tax rate. Although the point of the system is to redistribute money from the cash wealthy to the cash poor, hence the aggressive earnings taxation, you do still earn back some of what you put in, as one would do in a traditional tax system.

Now, if we look at the system from the perspective of a ‘poor’ user, we more clearly see the benefits. They are further encouraged to do media and graphics, and other activities as they are a) not taxed on earnings, or are taxed very little, and b) are guaranteed to get untaxed bonuses, which are similarly incentive-based to the base pay they are already guaranteed. Further, as a site, everyone is further encouraged to write media and do graphics as it creates a larger effective pool for bonuses, which in turn creates more tax revenue and so on. An infinite money printer glitch. All of this would hopefully propel users to a more sustainable bank balance faster, meaning fewer people stall out, and quit.

Essentially, though, this is just a ploy to take from the rich and give to the poor, arguably the opposite of modern real-life monetary and fiscal policy.

So, come S84, be prepared for SRS agents and audits. We will be knocking on your simulated doors.

The pay for this media will be untaxed, by the way. If any of the math is wrong, it's not. Cheers.

I think I see a few structural flaws in this system.
1. The people with high bank accounts already on the site tend to be people who are submitting a lot of media and graphics or who have been GMs for a bazillion years. Under your system wouldn't those people receive a good chunk/all of the bonuses?
2. Along that line, doesnt that disincentivize people who are known for their quality media/graphics with strong bank accounts from creating stuff?
3. Charging based on gross total value at the beginning of a period feels very counter to how most taxation systems are set up. Why not just charge on net income or revenue at period end like most modern income tax systems? This seems to overcomplicate and also double dip a bit.
4. Along that line this feels like a strong disincentive for people that were formerly strong users and earners to recreate. Imagine going away from the SHL for a year and finding your bank account you built through hard work is gone.

I feel like cards have served a good purpose by taking money out of the system and this is kinda a hat on a hat.

Yes, I know this was probably not meant to be taken seriously.