Help me understand taxation

[Knugen]

So, if I have a suplus of Wood for example, should I raise or lower taxes for that business?

How should my strategy be to optimize the industry of my city?

[jk2l]

taxation affect demands. if you don't really care much about which direction you build your city, you can just flat rate for everything.

if you want your residential to be more focus on high density, then you lower the tax on high density zone. (this can sort of artificially allow better skyscraper city)

if you want to focus more on tourism you can lower tax on entertainment related tax.

surplus/deficit mainly affect local industry. if you have surplus, then they are just likely go export. if you have deficit then it will be more on import. importing goods are more costly, this will affect industry profit. if you have more surplus then your local industry will be easier to level up as they have bigger profit

[Knugen]

Why cant I see how much I am earning on exports and loosing on imports? Can only see for water and electricity?

[mike23E]

Originally posted by Knugen:

Why cant I see how much I am earning on exports and loosing on imports? Can only see for water and electricity?

Because you are not earning anything with these exports. The companies in your city are. Water and electricity are produced by the city, all the other goods are produced by the private sector.

[Rdizz]

Originally posted by mike23E:

Originally posted by Knugen:

Why cant I see how much I am earning on exports and loosing on imports? Can only see for water and electricity?

Because you are not earning anything with these exports. The companies in your city are. Water and electricity are produced by the city, all the other goods are produced by the private sector.

However, as far as I can tell when you have a surplus you do get a boost in income. I am assuming there is more "sales tax" coming in your way from that specific industry.

[Billy Lee]

Originally posted by Knugen:

So, if I have a suplus of Wood for example, should I raise or lower taxes for that business?

How should my strategy be to optimize the industry of my city?

oh h honey i dosnt matter in this deep simulation. Do you like green, blue or yellow color in this colorbook?

[Daveyboy]

I'd have thought raise taxes on the ones in surplus and lower them on the ones in deficit so encourage things to be more balanced and reduce the amount you're importing, which affects company profitability. Also, if you lower taxes on something like food which requires livestock and you have a deficit in livestock it's probably best to address that first. But I'm kinda guessing here tbh.
Regarding residential taxes, I've not seen any way to tax different densities differently, only different education levels. Taxing different densities was a CS1 feature that's not in CS2 I think.

[Cur]

Originally posted by Knugen:

So, if I have a suplus of Wood for example, should I raise or lower taxes for that business?

How should my strategy be to optimize the industry of my city?

Try to minimize production deficits. Your industry will produce goods that you either export or are involved in your commercial industries. If you have a lot of wood it can support the leveling up of many timber industrial plants. There is an analog for every type of natural resource you can harvest.

If you have to import you will lose profit to import costs. Try to lower taxes when importing a lot. As you reduce production deficits you can raise taxes and maintain "happy" industrial areas with no rent problems.

Ignore the demand bars that tell you to build more. Focus on optimizing your current industries. Make sure that cims have access to transit that allows them to get educated so that higher level industry has enough workers.

MOST IMPORTANT! Sometimes you have to let your city percolate. You just have to let off the gas and let things settle out for a while. Stop changing things and just watch and see where you can make more optimizations in traffic and zoning.