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#### Taxation in Game

OK - its Sunday - the kids are beating me up and generally that means its time to talk about all things fiscal. Now, dont get me wrong - I love a good fiscal stimulus me....I mean who doesn't? However I have a sort of complaint (although thats far too strong a word for my feelings which are more top level "Meh" around this)
I spent an afternoon brushing the fox here in UR - a pleasureable activity I think we'll all agree and then shoved it all up on auction for a fair price. However the "man" here has taken 7% off me! I mean 7%! EACH TIME!
Now i'm pretty sure this is an American owned game thingy but thats the sort of charge I would expect in the old USSR - not the land of the free (copyright Fox Corp).
Serious point though - whats the whole 7% thing about? if it went somewhere like a monthly prize draw for Players i'd get it but it just goes "poof" into the interweb - so therefore to me seems meaningless. I know players in the past have apparently used the auction site to gain extra storage but this could easily solved by keeping items on there until either sold or an expired time. Whatever the solution - to me the 7% seems pointless as its not used for anything and therefore, I think, sucks.
Didn't you lot kick some tea in the water once and say something about taxation and representation? Well i'm kicking the flamming Humbaba, Earthshaker and indeed the Cloud 11 Smoothy into the Sea of Non Specificity - Repeal the 7% listing thing!!
Oh and don't start me on 2 currants to send a mail message......I mean!!...........

Posted 6 months ago by Loupin | Permalink

### Replies

- If you were to read far back enough in the forums, you'd probably find some posts from a time before auction fees, when people were using auctions as adjunct storage. If, for example, you had run out of room in your bags, you could auction twenty stacks of sparkly for ten million currants each, and then, when you had room in your bags, you could cancel the auctions to retrieve your items. Fees discourage that practice.
  Posted 6 months ago by glum pudding | Permalink
- I though tinyspeck is canadian owned game (vancounver) and like the poster above there many threds with answer's to this
  Posted 6 months ago by Cryroth | Permalink
- Candian - American - its all west really!
  But really - 7%! for nothing! - heres an idea - charge the 7% if an item isnt sold or taken off the listing......that wont penalise poor sellers like me......<eats more caviar>
  Posted 6 months ago by Loupin | Permalink
- You'll still probably make more by selling through auction than by selling to a vendor... 93% of a buttload of currants is still a buttload of currants!
  Posted 6 months ago by Cole Frehlen | Permalink
- Think of it as a service charge, not a tax, like what eBay and PayPall both gouge you for. For a lot of online auction houses and money handling services, especially if you combine the two, 7% is actually quite fair.
  I come from the world of fine art, where to show and sell your piece in most public settings, the standard commission is 50%. Not that that has any bearing on this game what-so-ever. Just why I didn't blink at this myself!
  So, on the one hand, the delivery frogs have got to pay for their yoga classes somehow.
  On the other hand, your complaining about it is very genuine! The heartfelt cry of an honest merchant! It should be applauded. Well done, sir!
  On the gripping hand, most of that fee is probably going to the bureaucrocs! And you know how hard it is to get their claws off of money once they've got a hold of it, even if they don't really need it! I suggest someone pickets their offices until some real change is made.
  Posted 6 months ago by Carl Projectorinski | Permalink
- Maybe that 7%, or a percentage of it, could go towards a lottery. Vendors could offer lotto tickets with numbers chosen by the ticket buyer. If no one wins that days lotto, the currants are carried over to the following day.
  Posted 6 months ago by Blahtopian | Permalink
- About a month ago, TS simplified the auction system. In the past, you were charged a 3% (corrected) fee (with a 3 currant minimum) to post the auction. Then, if the item sold, you were charged an additional 5% fee. You had 24 hours to sell your item before the auction expired and you had to pay the listing fee again.
  Now, you pay one fee (7%) and you have 72 hours to sell your item before you have to list it again. Assuming you are pricing things so that they sell within 72 hours, you're actually being charged less now than you were before.
  Posted 6 months ago by WindBorn | Permalink
- Maybe the 7% tax goes toward the construction of a Golden Kukubee Head (TM. No? Well it should be.) in Groddle Forest Junction? It would, of course, take at least 1200 golden bricks. These would be bought by the bureaucrocs at around 12000c each. Gold ain't cheap.
  We'd get to see changes in the construction flash animation when we hit milestones like 20, 40, 60 and 80 percent complete!
  EDIT: @Windborn Actually the Glitch log has this to say about auctions "Second: auction commissions (formerly 8%) have been eliminated and listing fees increased to 7% (from 3%). So, it's much cheaper to sell."
  So there's even more of a benefit now than you said! Profity.
  Posted 6 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom | Permalink
- I think the auction fees are a good thing. It encourages people to price thing competitively so they sell and their fee isn't wasted.
  And while storage isn't the issue it was before since going home requires no energy it does discourage people from using the auctions as bag storage in locked areas like Neva or AB.
  Now, if they really want to steer people (like me) away from selling to vendors they might want to rethink the fees a bit. I personally almost never use auctions just because I don't feel like figuring out where I'll get more currants after the fees. But since I do think there should be some kind of listing fee I don't know what the best solution is.
  Posted 6 months ago by SkyWaitress | Permalink
- Golden Kukubee Head !!!! Hell yea!
  Spend the auction house civic currants on public art.
  Posted 6 months ago by Ooola | Permalink
- The 7% goes nowhere and does nothing so should be abolished....I agreed with the author of this forum. :-)
  Posted 6 months ago by Loupin | Permalink
- Ah thanks for finding that Liza - your fee structure is more accurate...I was thinking Windborn was quoting the original fees levied when they split them between listing and commission, and not what the fees were raised to (which were the ones right before the switch back down to 7%).
  Many have speculated that this is a prelude to people having individual markets/shops or an attempt to encourage peer on peer trading vice using the auction house...just they've not given us better mechanisms for the other options yet.
  ETA: It's not like there are that many currant sinks in game...other than to encourage discussion, there really is no need for the big kerfluffle over it.
  Posted 6 months ago by BCWillie | Permalink
- The 7% fee makes people treat the auctions seriously.
  Posted 6 months ago by WalruZ | Permalink
- Thanks for the corrections. And yes, before the recent changes, it was a total fee of 8% if your item sold within 24 hours, and a minimum fee of 3% if it didn't.
  Now it is a total fee of 7% and you have 72 hours for it to sell.
  Posted 6 months ago by WindBorn | Permalink
- You wanna know what that 7% does? It helps pay for the frogs to deliver your goods to you. Sure, most of them would claim to be above material wealth, but that's just because you haven't seen them at home slurping up fireflies by the jarful and drinking non-fat organic soy Mabbish coffee, followed by an evening of "meditation" involving sizable quantities of purple flowers while lounging on their big fluffy couches. Not to mention all the ridiculous benefits they demand, such as hourly breaks to "center their chi", whatever that means, and free massages for rooks. (They claim the rooks just suffer from a bad chakra alignment, but the rooks have yet to take them up on the offer, despite having to keep the masseuses on payroll.)
  In more practical terms, the 7% helps fight against economic inflation. All those music blocks and food and whatnot that get sold in Cebarkul adds up fast, not to mention currants from quests, leveling, quoins, playing music for crabs, etc. With the exception of events like everyone swarming over a new set of cubimals, the amount of currants earned well outpaces what the vendors and icons take in. Thus, other money sinks, such as auction taxes, are needed to keep things from getting too far out of balance, lest currants go the way of the Zimbabwe dollar.
  Posted 6 months ago by Zigniber | Permalink
- I support the 7% fee. I think it is necessary to prevent frivolous auction behavior and is quite fair.
  It is not true that the fee does nothing. It removes currants from the game. Granted the 7% is just a tiny drop in the bucket of the enormous glut of currants (and other liquid assets) in the game but every little bit helps.
  However, I wish there was some way that the fee could be waived for items that rarely appear at auction. I wish there was an incentive to put rarely auctioned items up for sale. I don't mean items that are rare in themselves like GNG musicblocks, just items you don't often see being auctioned. I think having a large variety of items for sale is something valuable and should be encouraged in the game.
  I also wish we could see an historical graph of selling prices for each item. There are some websites that say they can show that information but I don't think they work.
  My only complaint about the auctions is the absurd 10 minute delivery time. I really hate that.
  As for the separate subject of taxation... The high level players are very fortunate that Glitch does not have the kind of taxation/rent/banking fees that many other games use to pull money out of the system and force high level players to keep playing. Having rent or property taxes or other types of upkeep fees encourages players to keep playing. The situation in glitch where a player can go away for a month or more and return to find all his assets intact is kind of odd. Compared to these kinds of fees I think the 7% auction fee is very mild and easy to bear.
  Posted 6 months ago by Miss Bobbit | Permalink
- "Having rent or property taxes or other types of upkeep fees encourages players to keep playing" um...maybe for some, but not for me. If I go away and come back and a bunch of stuff is gone, that is NOT going to make me want to keep playing.
  Posted 6 months ago by juv3nal | Permalink
- Yeesh, It's called a money sink, and it's so people don't have so much moolahs that prices get inflated in auctions. They did it in Gaia online all the time.
  Posted 6 months ago by SaSa Jack | Permalink
- SaSa Jack hit it on the head. It's simply a money sink so there are ways for currents to leave the economy so it's not flooded.
  Posted 6 months ago by a lifted pixel | Permalink
- Actually, the soviet union would not charge a percentage but the vast majority of everything would be state "owner" but you would not be allowed to own your own "farm" to sell.
  Also, Tiny Speck have office in both Canada AND the U.S.. But also have employees in (to quote their about page) "Russian Steppes to The Big Apple."
  Yes. It is a currant sink. Also stops folks from completely manipulating the auctions. Without the 7% it would be vastly easy to buy everything in a category and re-post it at 5c more. The inflation would go crazy!
  Posted 6 months ago by Lord Bacon-o | Permalink
- Maybe Stoot uses the 'money' to pay his employees, or at least provide their Glitchen with extra currant funds for cubimals.
  Posted 6 months ago by Gordon Lughsen | Permalink
- I don't mind the tax. But if they can lower it a bit...
  Also, a Glitch Lottery that gets held every month can be sorted out. Kinda like the real lottery, where there is a small (almost 0%) chance of winning. Just somewhere to put the income tax.
  Posted 6 months ago by T-Flip | Permalink
- Don't Thread On Me!
  Posted 6 months ago by Papa Legba | Permalink
- I'm happier with the 7% flat than the 3% with 8% commission (11%) total. Also, 3 days instead of 1. Woo Hoo!
  Posted 6 months ago by foolbunny | Permalink
- There was a short while there when the 7% was coupled with 24 hr sell time that pretty much made auctions impossible. i don't mind the 7% solution, but the 3+8 made market speculation a bit easier. I do/did enjoy that aspect of the game. This along with the other major sink (cubimals) seems to be TS's way of geeking the economy.
  Ecurnomics ( ecurnomics.com/ ) does as good a job as anyone of showing price trends. It is impossible to track actual selling price since auction IDs aren't available, but their scatter graphs along with daily averages and the price support point (Tool vendor sell) make it pretty easy to figure out what is going on.
  The new auction mechanics encourage downward movement on prices and are kind of deceptive since they don't show a history. I suppose a smart glitchen could use this to manipulate markets as well... I really prefer using the Glitch Market Auction Helper ( glitchmarket.com/ ) to sell since it allows easy multiple auctions, but whatever. Tomato-tomahto.
  So end of story, I'm totally ok with the new mechanics. Just wish I could actually manage to sell this stupid moly. And that people would stop selling my old standby of Awesome Stews at below market. And...
  Posted 6 months ago by Pancito | Permalink
- They use the 7% to fill up the dirt holes. Don't you notice every new game day the holes are filled? When was the last time you saw a pothole filled that fast? That's service and I'll gladly pay 7% for that!!!
  Posted 6 months ago by Eye Wonder | Permalink
- Blahtopian wrote: Maybe that 7%, or a percentage of it, could go towards a lottery. Vendors could offer lotto tickets with numbers chosen by the ticket buyer. If no one wins that days lotto, the currants are carried over to the following day.
  I was thinking about the same thing :D
  +1
  Posted 6 months ago by Rutger | Permalink
- I like the sound of a raffle! There could be bacon in it! :D
  Posted 5 months ago by OMG BACON!! | Permalink
- I like the idea of the 7% going into a community project/fund/lottery, it could be something as simple as the top five contributers of the day get a prize, which could be something you can neither make, nor buy in shops ~maybe something similar to the Street Creator Trophies.
  Posted 5 months ago by ~Scilly~ | Permalink
- The entire point of the fee is that the money disappears completely, giving it back to players would defeat its purpose. We can all make currants appear out of nothing, if there isn't a mechanism in the game that removes a percentage of the currants from existence then there will be inflation. In fact, as they move to having more ways for us to sell to each other in game there may need to be additional currant sinks (though towers are doing an okay job of it for the mega-rich right now).
  Posted 5 months ago by Humbabella | Permalink
- Aren't people buying tower goods from each other? Isn't it really more of a switch of who's mega rich ;)? I still think we need more currant sinks, and I STILL think the 7% fee should be going to a giant golden Kukubee head in GFJ!
  Posted 5 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom | Permalink
- What? No!
  We clearly need a giant titanium Kukubee head.
  Posted 5 months ago by Magic Monkey | Permalink
- Titanium Shmitanium! At the very least we should do a platinum Kukubee head.
  Posted 5 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom | Permalink
- Currant sink, plain and simple. I can remember playing MUDs back in the mid to late 1990's, and with money coming into the game and no real way for it to go out, you suddenly had objects worth 20-30 million a piece, because there was that much money in the economy. With us being able to sell to the vendors and pull money into the game, there needs to be a way to pull it back out.
  (I mean, we cubi addicts do a good job of that, but we can't bear the brunt of burning currants alone!)
  Posted 5 months ago by Aliera | Permalink
- I clicked on this too quickly to realize it didn't say "Tattoos in Game"...
  Taxes: don't care, as long as it's of the 7% variety.
  Tattoos: do want.
  Posted 5 months ago by Djabriil | Permalink
- +1 to people who understand game economics.
  Also Liza is right, Towers aren't money sinks except for the 500c for permits and the mentioned 7% fee on buying things from other Glitches to build with.
  Having a lower auction fee could be facilitated by removing a large currant faucet from the game, such as all vendors *hint hint*
  On another note, I think many high level glitches would agree that the game really need more iMG sinks.
  Posted 5 months ago by Chee42 | Permalink
- Towers are money sinks. Total wealth in the economy = currants + vendor sell value of items. But yeah, they are only a dent in the mega-rich. Ultimately money sinks must be percentages or there won't be an equilibrium point and there will be inflation.
  Posted 5 months ago by Humbabella | Permalink
- Ah, you mean the construction of towers. Duh.
  Posted 5 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom | Permalink