Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Taxes and Fees

In honor of tax day, thought I'd share some insights of how Apple Valley collects taxes and fees.

The Old Version
The hood used to collect $750 per family and $1000 per owned business as a tax every Monday. Well, with only nine families and three owned businesses, that wasn't a lot of money (less than $10,000). Even after raising taxes to $1000 per family and $1500 per owned business the result was $13,500 every seven simdays. With the fact of the new simlonic calendar, this wasn't enough money to last 7 years!

The Possibilities
I debated property and income taxes, but with the sims living in apartments, thier net worth is a lot lower and besides, if they spent most of thier money on depreciable objects, then they won't have as large of a tax bill to pay, which seems like a tax shelter for those greedy wealthy sims that love to buy everything in the catalog. Not to mention making note of net worth or income before taxes were due was a little too much like work for me :)

The New Version-The Numbers
The sims are divided into tiers: wealthy (net worth $100,000+), mid-range (net worth$50,000-$99,000), low (net worth$25,000-$49,000) and proverty (net worth below $25,000). Thankfully with only nine families, I can easily tell where each family lands.

Then each tier pays a tax based on the number of sims in that household.
Tier I (wealthy)=$2000/sim
Tier II (middle class)=$1500/sim
Tier III (lower)=$1000/sim
Tier VI (proverty)=$500/sim

Misc Taxes:
Pet tax of $1000 per animal.
Luxury Tax of $5000 for each vacation home
Business Tax of $5000 for each owned business

Credits:
$1000 for each child
$1000 each married couple
10% of significant donations ($10,000 or more) up to $5000.

So for example the Herendez family. Tier I, 5 sims, 1 business, 1 vacation home, no donations, 3 children, married. $10,000+$5000+$5000-$3000-$1000=$16,000 tax bill.

The Humphrey family. Tier VI (not making much on that pastor's salary), 5 sims, no business/vacation home/donations, 3 children, 3 pets, married. $2500+$3000-$3000-$1000=$1500 tax bill.

Continuing for the rest of the families
Kent=$6000
Wilsonoff=$5000 (donated to Simmington Hills & footed the bill for the new university building)
Shazad=$3000
Grey=$10,000
Dawson=$2500
Sweeny=$1000
Warwick=$16,000

Total of $61,000 from the playable sims. Then to make things fair, each townie and NPC pays a modified tax, they use the community lots and public transport as well, brings in another $150,000. So $211,000 is the budget for 4 years.

The Timing
So every Monday and Thursday, the hood council president will collect taxes (this is about every 3/4 years). The current president visits the administrative office and using familyfund cheat, I'll collect the taxes and fees. Then the hood council will tell me in thier meeting ( via thier thought bubbles :P ) what to spend the money on and notes will be made in the council notes. As of now there isn't a seperate account for the hood council president and the hood's funds. I'm thinking of creating a placeholder sim and that sim will be the hood's accounts. We'll see since I'm more of a this lot cost about this much instead of a this lot was exactly this many dollars and cents type of player.

3 comments:

  1. Niiice.....*runs away with new tax ideas*

    No, really. That's a well-organized post you've got there. And unless you object, I'll steal it and give you credit for it. Which, technically, isn't stealing, but, still. =P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Crescent County-Have at it! I'm glad you like it!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading and commenting!

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