Market Discussions

Stop and think about this for a minute. If you're having a difficult time picturing how you're going to successfully trade/invest with a 5% tax then maybe you should rethink your career. In the real world 5% return on trades may be decent but in eve it's evidence that you're a neophyte.

As one who engages in market pvp and who is creeping ever closer to being a trillionair I am ever reminded by the wealthy isk barons of just how far I have to go to truly be among the elite. So many of these have bought or inherited fortunes and spend their time maintaining their wealth simply by trading large quantities of expensive and relatively stable issues such as plex.
Since they may be trading 500 plex at a time all of a sudden even 3% is not such a bad return and in such a way they are able to maintain their fortunes.

This new tax rate will force the elite to either prove they have a game or else be stagnant giving those uf us with true trading skills opportunity to catch up and eventually take over.

Bring on the Taxes...bring on the Tears.

I was going to start off with this sentence -
"The ISK sink could actually be going down with the revised temporary taxes that Fozzie announced at fanfest."

A bit of research makes me think it's not true, but my point is the ISK SINK, and sink is in bold for a reason, change is much smaller than we might think. My maths on this is a little flakey, so please, if your maths on this is better then please speak up.

Considering the ISK SINK only. Assuming max standings and skills in all cases.

Current market overheads:
Broker fee = 0.1875% - ISK sink
Transaction tax = 0.75% - ISK sink
= combined ISK sink of 0.9375%

Temporary stepping stone overheads announced by Fozzie at fanfest:
Broker fee = 2% - paid to structure owner, NOT an ISK sink
Transaction tax = 1% - ISK sink
= combined ISK sink of 1%

Original planned doomsyday market overheads:
Broker fee = 3.5% - paid to structure owner, NOT an ISK sink
Transaction tax = 1.25% - ISK sink
= combined ISK sink of 1.25%

Will you be paying much more than the ISK sink analysis above to use the market? Yes but most of that ISK will stay in circulation, being paid to the player owning that station. From a pure ISK sink point of view the first hop is small, the final hop represents a 33.3r% increase in the ISK sink overheads of market trading. From 0.9275 to 1.25%
That number cannot be a coincidence :) They want to slow the economy of Eve by a third.

Links for my sources
Current market overheads
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Thoraemond/eve-market-order-broker-fees-20110417.png

Temporary stepping stone overheads announced by Fozzie at fanfest
and
Original planned doomsday market overheads
https://www.twitch.tv/ccp/v/62309292
time 02:44:32

This might sound crazy, but the 1/3 increase in the ISK sink could more be an attack on the price of PLEX than anything else.

Traded goods come from faucets; mining, PI, moongoo, industry and research slots. They explode and sink nicely.
ISK is separate from everything else, it does not count as goods above. The ISK faucets and sinks are totally different.
When a ship explodes, no ISK leave the Eve economy, only goods. PLEX is a function of ISK. PLEX is only tied to two things, ISK and real life money. An increase of the ISK sink will affect PLEX more than anything else in the Eve universe.

Very good point.
I assumed player min maxing. Trading at lower tax rates at player owned stations.
What you say is absolutely true. If players trade at NPC stations the ISK sink rate goes from 0.9375 to a 4.75% which is just over 500% of current That's mind bogglingly scary for what it could do to ISK.

For every 1 ISK taken form the economy today, just over 5 ISK would be taken under the final plans. IF you trade at an NPC station.

That would devastate the PLEX to ISK exchange rate.

you somehow forgot the part where most structure owners are NPCs and the broker fee is therefore an ISK sink

Your really thinking Citadels will take up market HUB roles any time soon? That is a rather bold asumption.. I doubt that will be the case for at least 6 months or so.. They are simply too expensive and a risk to defend, so that transfer is not very likely to happen unless we see some major player create a public and defended Citadel in close proximity to the trade hubs.

Sorry but this is an ISK sink, it is activated to draw riches out of the game. Noone is going to get richer from it, that's like saying that a halving of the npc bounties would make the best of the mission runners more wealthy.

Considering that contracts to or from Citadels would be unavailable from the start, and the Medium Citadels can't fit a market module for some reason (???), it'll take a lot more than 6 months to convince people that they're useful.

That is pretty much exactly the same, and why the richer will get richer..

If the rewards are reduced, or the skill and time strain increased, the mentioned barrier of entry goes UP, that means the remaining supply is handled by less, and thus the price goes UP.

So as the smaller unskilled, and unable to own Citadels, and defend them, types are forced out, the prices will go UP, and competition down..

Taxes will increase the spreads on items found in NPC hubs. Behavior will adjust, taxes will be a material line on players spreadsheets, business will go on as usual.

There will be arbitrage opportunities for people playing the player vs NPC tax gap, however it would be very marginal and would need to be done on very liquid markets in order to generate even marginal returns.

Any player owned trade hub making bank for its owner will be assaulted for content or salt.

However citadels might be a boon for insider markets, vertically integrated industrial corps might actually gain a legitimate advantage to overcome the herding cats problem with multiple player dependent industrial systems.

Time will tell.