Market Discussions

Easily avoided.

I keep all ISK on my alt account, do all my purchase/sells/activity on my main account and only shoot over enough ISK from the alt account to cover immediate needs.

If we want to talk taxes, we must look at what we want to accomplish with them after taking the time to understand how different styles of tax cuts, levies and credit can affect gameplay.
The current concern seems to be inflation. Reducing money supply is conventional wisdom. Total assets could be taxed, 2% as mentioned could temporarily turn the tide against monopolies which I suspect would be good for gameplay. I wish I knew the numbers for reactions. A lot wealth gravitates through them. This might also be a viable taxation vector if taxed with isk instead of product. Other areas that act like ISK wells or holding ponds need to be identified also. The current (refine) tax for poses is counter productive. Especially since we will be needing more minerals. T3, LP and faction modules are others that come to mind. It really depends on what you want to do with taxes though.

Do you want to decrease money supply to try to control inflation. Do you want to control the size of monopolies. Stimulate conflict and if so, financial or military just to name a few. Any taxation changes need to be projected out a few cycles to see their real effect. to often we only go out one layer deep. To stimulate conflict for instance, you need temporary rolling tax credits. Instead we don't tax much at all and end up with the monopolies and a repeated drift toward stagnancy.

Aren't you forgetting that while this game has one currency, it is completely artificial and can undergo drastic changes over just a day whether through expansions or just market activity and that the faucets must be balanced with the sinks. I agree taxes are boring - at least in the way they are implemented now. I have trade skills pretty high to reduce taxes but those are mostly not needed because they are so low. Higher taxes would allow these skills to be more useful but then in the end all you have are more "essential" skills that everyone trains for and then once training is complete nothing else changes, back to square one. (remember our old learning skills that everyone trained and made new characters pointless for several months before CCP just removed them?)

One of the interesting things mentioned earlier was a transaction tax on regional gates or something of the like. Seems interesting, forces people to fine tune courier and transport to reduce costs. Not a great idea but it is a good example of a tax that can be implemented to affect gameplay in a more positive manner and encourage innovation and thinking outside the box instead of just flat taxing and forcing people to train skills to drop it.

Another "tax" that could be cool is a tax to fund some sort of consumer financial regulator group, probably would have to be NPC, that would manage the credit of pod pilots to make player corps have a reference for loans, stocks, investment, etc. which is something I know a lot of us tycoons want - more business flexibility. Or maybe a cost to hold inventory for homogeneous items (prevent someone stockpiling huge amounts of morphite or tech for instance and increase costs to hold in inventory, just like the real world)

All are half baked ideas that I just came up with here but the point I wanted to make was if you are going to tax or create sinks, do it in a way to encourage innovative gameplay and give the players something else to play with or work with, not just a flat tax sink.

If you introduce artificial wealth 'taxes' then players will game the tax system, just like real life.

Recognise this and make the 'tax' rules promote the game vision.

The obvious example is extend the effects of standing on taxes and fees.

Gate & Docking fees based on Ship (+cargo) Mass * Security.

More Office with Rent based on standing.

Extend the contract system, e.g. Reverse Auctions for Courier contracts.

we need more taxes to remove all the tech isk form the game.

Making blue books from wh be a part of ship construction instead of an isk faucet.