Proposed Faction Taxation System

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1

I’d like to collect people’s thoughts on all the ways a faction level government could collect taxes. I think the most obvious is to request a percentage of its constituent planets’ tax income. Is there a reasonable way to implement a broader income tax? A “foreign nationals” tax (paid by non-factioners with bases in faction space)? Tariffs?

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I’m envisioning a tariff system similar to that established by TIR Convention. And I’d take this as an opportunity to make shipping & trading bit more interesting.

The system would have a “general tariffs rule” and a “TIR-ish tariffs rule”:

  • General:

    • Rule #1: Leaving from a system with faction affinity is considered as one boarder crossing activity, same for entering.
    • Rule #2: If a planet could have a different affinity from system, landing on this planet is considered as one boarder crossing activity, same for taking off. How transiting via gateway would work on such planet would be an interesting topic!
    • Rule #3: Faction government would have tariffs applied to all MATs and SHPTs carried by the ship triggered boarder crossing, paid by carrier. Only exception is fuel inside its fuel tanks.
    • Rules for specific MATs, locations or even direction of travel for more fun/conflicts.

    These rules would have following effects:

    • Player would avoid spreading bases into many faction regions, as it would increase amount of boarder crossing activities.
    • Players would try to make a route to a location have the same faction affinity, as it would decrease amount of boarder crossing activities.
      An example of this is RC-796 ↔ XH-556 via RC-040, Castillo-Ito players might have interest in flipping RC-040 to eliminate the need for tariffs, while NEO players might try to keep RC-040 under control for a steady flow of tariff income.

  • TIR-ish:

    • Rule #1: Carrier need to hold a valid licence for this set of rule to be active (qualified).
      Licence can be in the form of a fee collected regularly by issuing faction government, just like renting a warehouse.
      Licence can have different tiers with limits on accumulated mass & volume of SHPT.[1]
      Cost of licence per t/m³ should drop as tier gets higher.
    • Rule #2: Only applies to SHPT, as loose MATs are impossible to track.
    • Rule #3: Only consider faction affinity of origin and destination of the SHPT.
    • Rule #4: Owner of SHPT pays all tariffs upon delivery of SHPT at destination.
    • Rule #5: If the SHPT is unpacked due to contract breaching/termination, the immediate location the SHPT is about to enter (or already at if not in flight) is considered as destination. In such case, tariffs would be paid by carrier.
    • Rules for specific MATs, routes or even company’s faction affinity for more fun/conflicts.

    These rules would have following effects:

    • Sending SHPT across boarders with a suitable and qualified shipping provider can reduce tariffs applied.
      For example, sending a SHPT from HRT to BEN, this SHPT would be charged for additional import & export tariffs when transiting through Antares or NCE faction regions. But with a qualified carrier, the SHPT only have Insitor export tariff and Castillo-Ito import tariff.
    • Detached faction region won’t have the need to secure faction affinity along entire route.
      Rip Morian’s infinite tariff gitch at RC-040

  1. For example: I’ve handled approximately 157,000t / 70,000m³ of cross boarder SHPT in April. I would need a tier for 200,000t / 200,000m³. ↩︎

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3

In the first draft of the Faction Influence concept Counterpoint mentioned faction levies:

It is a simple idea, compared to what YuLun suggests, but it is a form of faction taxation system :slight_smile:

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