Steam should lower the community market's trading tax.

[SING]

from 15% to 10%. It likes cutting interest rates. It can encourage people selling and buying in steam community market. Steam can profit from higher amount of tax income. And gamers can afford lower tax from selling.

[supertrooper225]

Valve lowering their cut for using their own marketplace isn't like cutting interest rates, it is like cutting income for use of their property. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

[SING]

the purpose of lowering the tax is to encourage people selling/buying in market community. Because half of the people are using trading system to trade. If valve lower the tax, the amount of people using scm will increase.

[supertrooper225]

They don't need to encourage them. You want to use Valve's system, that is their cut for using their market. They have to maintain the market and benefit from creating the market. You just want their cut to be lower because....you want it that way. 5% isn't going to drum up an additional 100 million people to start using Steam and plenty of people already use it.

[Tsuman]

Originally posted by supertrooper225:

They don't need to encourage them. You want to use Valve's system, that is their cut for using their market. They have to maintain the market and benefit from creating the market. You just want their cut to be lower because....you want it that way. 5% isn't going to drum up an additional 100 million people to start using Steam and plenty of people already use it.

Agree

[alveolate]

to be fair, you need stats to tell if cutting the "tax rate" would lead to more spending. generally speaking, the tax rate isn't very high, but it could still lead to greater spending and higher overall tax income for steam since these trades (probably) have highly elastic demand/supply.

i'd definitely buy a lot less if the rate got higher; but if it went down i would definitely buy more.

[supertrooper225]

Originally posted by alveolate:

to be fair, you need stats to tell if cutting the "tax rate" would lead to more spending. generally speaking, the tax rate isn't very high, but it could still lead to greater spending and higher overall tax income for steam since these trades (probably) have highly elastic demand/supply.

i'd definitely buy a lot less if the rate got higher; but if it went down i would definitely buy more.

I think this is about how much one earns from the tax cut. And Valve making more money by cutting their own cut isn't really a grounded statement to make.

[SING]

it is in vain to discuss this because it needs a comparing experiment to prove it. Whether lowering the tax can increase the amount of tax income.

[supertrooper225]

The key to it is discovering whether 5% is a good enough number to drum up an overall better income through more sales. Which is extremely unlikely. Even if it did...this would most likely be a short term boost, not a long term one. Which means the cut would cost Steam in the grand scheme of things.

[SING]

according to ur logic, valve can increase 5% tax to get 25% more income because you think 5% is ineffective to people's behaviour. Actually, don't underestimate 5%.

[supertrooper225]

Do what?

With your logic less money makes more money. That isn't the case. It is simple math. Does the higher number of sales generate more money than keeping the 5%? And how do we know those sales will occur and benefit Valve in the long term, justifying the change? There is no reason to think that would happen.

Valve is a highly data-centric company. Everything they do is based around math. 15% is the amount they decided on for a reason.

[SING]

yea we dont know. We can close the discussion.

[alveolate]

Originally posted by supertrooper225:

With your logic less money makes more money.

take a course on economics. we're talking about lowering the rates, which could lead to far more transactions, which could lead to more overall profits. this is also how microtransactions works in f2p games.

afaik, the 15% rate has been around since the beginning. unless they have tried lowering/increasing the rate on some representative segment, they wouldn't really have actual data on price elasticity. if they raised the rate, people would definitely complain and the backlash would be insane, so the only good options they have are to either keep it unchanged or lower it. either way, i doubt steam has precise data that could justify a specific rate.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by alveolate:

Originally posted by supertrooper225:

With your logic less money makes more money.

take a course on economics. we're talking about lowering the rates, which could lead to far more transactions, which could lead to more overall profits. this is also how microtransactions works in f2p games.

afaik, the 15% rate has been around since the beginning. unless they have tried lowering/increasing the rate on some representative segment, they wouldn't really have actual data on price elasticity. if they raised the rate, people would definitely complain and the backlash would be insane, so the only good options they have are to either keep it unchanged or lower it. either way, i doubt steam has precise data that could justify a specific rate.

Me thinks you should follow your own advice.

That 15% isn't a tax, it's a service charge. Not unlike the fees your bank charges you every time you use an ABM, debit or credit card. There is a rather distinct difference.

A Tax can only be issued and collected by a government entity. A service charge however is meant to cover the cost of providing the service you have used. In short it's not unlike a purchase of sorts.

[supertrooper225]

Originally posted by alveolate:

Originally posted by supertrooper225:

With your logic less money makes more money.

take a course on economics. we're talking about lowering the rates, which could lead to far more transactions, which could lead to more overall profits. this is also how microtransactions works in f2p games.

afaik, the 15% rate has been around since the beginning. unless they have tried lowering/increasing the rate on some representative segment, they wouldn't really have actual data on price elasticity. if they raised the rate, people would definitely complain and the backlash would be insane, so the only good options they have are to either keep it unchanged or lower it. either way, i doubt steam has precise data that could justify a specific rate.

Yea...the 'tax' is more like what the store charges you to use their property. That is their income from you using the store. Pay attention in your economics classes. Companies don't make more money by charging you less. If Steam had data that showed it would be worth it...it would do it. Until then you just want more of the cut to go your way for no particular reason.

[sully]

yes