Highest Sustainable Tax Rate?

[V-Bro - The Titan's Driver]

Has anyone ever figured out what factors determine the highest tolerable tax rate?

I always wondered what the highest tax rate you could set, without people complaining and threatening to leave. My thinking is they should tolerate slightly higher taxes if you provide either better services or costly-but-beneficial policies,

I've only ever been able to set it up to 12%. Of course, citizens can still get angry about a sudden spike to 20%, or raising taxes when you're swimming in cash. Still, benefits such as quality emergency services, mass transit, and high-life entertainment don't come cheap. I don't think they should find 13% so unbearable if they live in near-perfect Pleasantville.

[BLÀde]

i can set it to 14% all zones right at the beginning and get no tax icons flashing. but when they start to level up they will complain and i have to drop it 1% each time. the lowest i can have it at with lvl 5 zones is 10% with the increased tax policy

[Pops]

12% at all times is ok. After over 4k hours of play I have never had a prob with12%.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by V-Bro - The Titan's Driver:

Has anyone ever figured out what factors determine the highest tolerable tax rate?

I have never tried to. I always stick to the default 9% tax rate. You can make so much money in this game without ever having to resort to fiddling with the taxes or the budget, so much so, that there simply is no good reason to do so.
If you have to rely on extorting more revenue from a reliable source of revenue because you're not able to bring enough money in, then rather than investigating how you can do so, you should instead be examining how and where you are over spending.

[Stealthy]

13% is fine as long as people are happy otherwise. If they lack some services, they will complain about it.

[kolpo_polpo]

The 2 policies who boost commercial zones will also increase tax revenue. Small and big business enthousiast or something.

[Pops]

Originally posted by kolpo_polpo:

The 2 policies who boost commercial zones will also increase tax revenue. Small and big business enthousiast or something.

Those will also double your commercial traffic as well.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

Originally posted by V-Bro - The Titan's Driver:

Has anyone ever figured out what factors determine the highest tolerable tax rate?

I have never tried to. I always stick to the default 9% tax rate. You can make so much money in this game without ever having to resort to fiddling with the taxes or the budget, so much so, that there simply is no good reason to do so.
If you have to rely on extorting more revenue from a reliable source of revenue because you're not able to bring enough money in, then rather than investigating how you can do so, you should instead be examining how and where you are over spending.

+1

9% is optimal it seems as the devs designed it this way. Raising taxes causes unhappiness and you lose money to make up for the unhappiness so it likely just balances out back to if you left it at 9% in the first place.

If you want more money build schools. Educated use less resources and levels us building quickly.

I build two schools first thing with my first two milestone monies. Set game speed to x3 and watch the dough pile up quickly. Actually, I set x3 speed as soon as I'm in the green.

[HardonCollider]

Taxes should be raised temporarily for increased income. However, you can raise them to max like I do because really, money is everything.

[BLÀde]

yep if you need a quick boost raise them to 29% until the pop starts to turn red than drop them back down again :P

[grazr]

One wonders why there's at tax gauge at all if moving it more than a few percent will damage your city in one form or another. I had mine at default 9% with a surplus of $4M at 50K running the game at normal speed. Typical income fluctuated between +4k to +12k per tick After i looked to see how much i could raise that tax gauge i've upped it to 12%, now have a pop of 70K with +20 to +45k revenue per tick (I'm guessing the disrepency in those figures is improved population vs service costs) sitting at $6M surplus and constantly re-modelling my highways and rail which is moderately expensive to do.

I've had a few death waves, fluctuating my population about 8K at the most; and i notice that mostly in my income suddenly dropping a few grand per tick.

[dvdprz12]

In my cities, they start complaining at 14%

[manonsen2003]

Isn’t it a dream if the real world only taxes you around 9-12%?

[GGcake]

set it to max just like in real life

[Tsubame ⭐]

Originally posted by manonsen2003:

Isn’t it a dream if the real world only taxes you around 9-12%?

Some countries do, even for wealthier people. In fact, there are a handful of countries with no personal income taxation whatsoever.

Qatar and UAE, for example, have 0% personal income taxes, and even businesses get taxed only 10%, a little less in UAE in general but Qatar does not even have sales taxes, while UAE has it... Well, they do have tons and tons of oil, nothing that could not be simulated in CS1 by building tons of oil industries.

Also, the ingame's tax could be well just "municipal taxes", and that cims are still on the hook for State/National taxes.

[Doc001]

Originally posted by GGcake:

set it to max just like in real life

LOL so true!