In the beginning (or close enough to count as the beginning) there were four ways to make ISK in Eve: miners who extracted wealth from asteroids, manufacturers who took those raw resources and built things to sell to other players, missioners/ratters who killed NPCs for profit, and traders who played the markets to create ISK from the complexities of the orders.
As corporations formed the question that arose was how to make ISK from the members of said corps. For miners and industrialists and traders, and corporation made for those activities had the implied necessities of cooperation and leveraging different abilities (e.g. miner versus hauler versus refiner) such that it makes sense to pay into the corporation to get something out of it you cannot do yourself (and this is back in the day before alt character proliferation, mind you).
But with NPC killing, the bounties are paid directly to the wallet of the combat pilot whether you are in a belt or mission. Cooperation helps with these activities to a point, but they are not impossible without other combat pilots (prior to salvaging of course). To address this imbalance corporations were granted the ability to tax payouts from agents and CONCORD to players in the corporation. And all was good.
But the game has changed since then and changed a lot.
Somewhere along the line CCP economists realized that direct ISK payouts increased the ISK supply and helped increase inflation. To combat this, the concept of rewarding players with a new mechanic called Loyalty Points was created which allowed players to receive rewards while creating an ISK sink as opposed to faucet. At first they were used to augment rewards in missions and then were used to replace ISK rewards in many new features such as Faction Warfare and Incursions.
The problem is that corporations that exist in these areas now have no corporate income from the day to day activities of member pilots, and are forced to look at top down income sources (i.e. moons) or micromanaging some sort of manual levy on pilots or surviving on donations.
Its time for CCP developers to put their heads together and come up with a plan to allow corporations alternative methods of taxation. At the very least, I'd suggest apply taxes to Loyalty Point gains, and I'd even consider taxing market transactions and contracts.
Thoughts, comments?
Posts
One of the nicest perks that WoW implemented for guilds was the perk that generates bonus gold for a guild every time a member loots. CCP could easily create a means for corporations to receive bonuses from member activities in Faction Warfare. This would create an incentive structure that encourages cooperation rather than a tax that works as a penalty against group efforts.
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer: I'm a CEO so it is in my very intrest to get more money out of the members. Please keep that in mind while reading. ;-)
ReplyDeleteYou are absoulutely right. It is about time to tax the different incomes equaly. The stationtrader makes a lot of money and has to pay nothing. The Miner could refine his stuff just without telling anyone and avoid taxes if there are any "manually" aplyed.
First Tax: Increase market taxation to double of current. 1/2 is a Sink like it works right now, the other half is optional and can go into the corp (100%) or be reduced. This must be very low as it aplys to all transaction.
Second: Implementing a method to put a "your corp takes" column in the refining window. Every Corpmember gets that aplyed and it is placed in corp delivery. It is defined independet from standard taxation and is present anywhere no matter where the stuff is refined.
Third: Corp gets there own LP account for any Entity there members generate them.
Obviously all this taxes MUST be in place in NPC corporations at maximum level (the full half of transaction fee) and a decent ammount in mining yield like 5 to 10 %.
So NPC corps would eliminate even more money/currency than current (11% corp tax) through transaction fee and reduced LP payout. Player corps on the other hand get a good overview of how is activ in which profession an profit from that.
And while at it, a more comfortable Wallet interface would be cool. Like taking a look at how much player x generated over last 4 weeks or so. Writing tools for that or adding it by hand is both bad.
I like your ideas, however did you think about the logistics of the mineral one? If people are refining all over the place that means your corp would have deliveries all over the place: a little here, some there, a shit load WAYYYY over there to pick up and consolidate for use.
DeleteLots of trips...
Well yes, I thought about it. In 0.0 it won't be a problem as the refining outposts / stations are limited. In high sec, yes it could get complicated. But it depends on the size of your corp and the discipline of your members. Most don't have enough standing to refine 100% so they will stick to one or two corporations. If your men are a bit messy you will need more guys to pull all the stuff together but it wouldn't change much from a long range buy order.
DeleteEven if you only buy at 2 or 3 Jumps, if the quantity is high enough it is almost certain that you get 15 out of 17 stations with something ;-)
IMO in goes done to corp communication and organization to limit that logistic effort.
What if corporations/alliances could bill players?
ReplyDeleteJust as sov is billed to alliances and offices to corporations.
Let me second Raziel in wanting support for capitation taxes. This is how I would want to run a corp, were I trying to run a larger one. Charge a flat amount -- say 100m per month per member -- and they keep whatever they earn. This discourages inactivity and encourages activity, unlike income taxation.
ReplyDeleteWow 100M a month is rediculus ... some months I make half that just depends
ReplyDelete