This mod is overpowered for what it does. Good idea, but poorly executed

i posted this on another tax bracket mod but I figure it bares to be reused here:
normally tax brackets works like this:
You earn an income in the lower let's say 25% bracket you pay taxes according to that rate.
You earn an income in the middle say 50% bracket you pay the rate for that on any money above the previous bracket. and so on.

example: If you have a regular income tax of 10%, for simplicity the average income is $100k
if you make $100k a year you pay $10k.
now let's say you get a "wealth" bracket that's anything above average income+50% where you pay 25% and you make $151k a year. You pay $15k in regular tax (10%), plus $250 in the wealthier bracket on everything above the average+50%. You don't pay $37750 as most people think.

Of course if you make a ton more money than the average it gets real expensive fast.

Joe, the fact that you think wealthy people pay less in taxes than poor people do tells me you know absolutely nothing about this subject. You also say wealthy people work less than poor people? That may be true in some cases but not most, just because they might not be doing hard labor does not mean someone isnt working hard.

Might want to read that all bottom to top if you care... I'm out of it after a 13 hour workday

Too much equality in outcome is a utopia and leads to those who thrive leaving or not trying as hard so it is impossible to work unlike too much opportunity which just creates a brutal emotionless system like Britain in the industrial revolution (i.e. it's not that people purposely tried to hurt eachother but most people were in a state of learned helplessness or outrage. Then inequality of opportunity started to increase since some people are born into better situations naturally). It all just depends on your own perception and the answer is normally in the middle somewhere but it moves around and is never clear; it changes with every person, event, and day that passes.

Also I see some arguments about how fair/unfair it is to tax people different. There is no right answer, it just depends on where your personal balance of opportunity and outcome are. If everyone is given the same benefits then some will fail while others thrive, some may or may not need what help you give and this is equal opportunity because everyone has the same resources. Equality in outcome is when you take from those who can thrive and give to those who fail to achieve the same results across the board. Opportunity is more "fair" to those who are purely competitive but most people want to help those who need it and for a government you want to have more stability in everything (education, employment, taxes, ect) so you need some equality too; too much though and you collapse like it's 1991.

They do have loopholes but there is something called the alternative minimum tax which forces them to pay at least a certain percent if they make over X amount and that is always higher than the average tax rate. In effect any tax breaks you give in the system is a tax break to the rich because they pay the majority of taxes and most of them don't ever collect on the programs they are forced to pay into like social security, unemployment, medicare, ect. Also you can't tax yourself out of debt either, every single tax increase imposed decreases the government's revenue in the longterm (except the taxes on systems already owned/run by the government like social security which proves how inefficient they are). With 25% of a cow will get you a lot more and better hamburgers than 60% of a newborn calf so if you leave it alone for a couple years and let the money grow you can get more money and take a smaller bite out of the cow er i mean economy but still get better results.

Sales taxes and flat taxes are both effectively tax lower income people more (although they are more "fair") because you are taxing on both disposable and none disposable income at the same rates. In the USA when you net out benefits gained from taxes vs taxes paid more than half of the country already doesnt "pay" taxes each year because they receive more in tax funded benefits than they pay.Tax brackets are the correct way to collect but the current system effectively only taxes the top 40% or so while the rest receive a greater benefit over their lives than they pay into. The highest earners pay around 30% in taxes in the USA whereas the lowest earners pay an effective -55 -60% (receive more than they ever pay) and middle income tends to roughly break even when you net out social security and other benefits they do/will receive. In effect the top half of the earners pay more than their fair share while most of us complain they dont pay enough while receiving their money.

@Wayne, actually no, tax brackets allow for lowering taxes for the lower class, which is something that gives them more spending power than they'd otherwise have. Poor people spend greater percentages of their income than rich people do, so why should they both pay the same

well Wayne, because your comment is factually false, where did your ideas come from if not emotion?

As for the fair tax that would be a national sales tax. So you don't even have to see an accountant for it. When you buy a $10 hair brush you'd be paying $0.10 in taxes where if you buy a $1,000,000 boat you'd be paying $10,000 in federal taxes. The people making the most money still pay the most in taxes and one great thing about either of these taxes is you can't evade them.

@Ahriman, you're a waste of life, had my comment been emotionally based, like your idiotic comment towards my comment, then it would contain logical fallacies and not be based in reality, thus easy to refute. You can not refute my claim.

@ Joe another name for "loopholes" is "tax deductions" I agree with you that there shouldn't be tax deductions or credits. We should have a simplified tax code. I've argued for a flat tax or a "fair tax" both taxes do tax people progressively, as in the more you make the more you pay. With the flat tax if everyone pays 5% the person who makes $24,000 pays $1,200 and the person who makes $2,000,000 pays $100,000 If we had this system i'd even agree with the trump tax brackets that everyone making under $50,000 would be exempt from paying federal taxes.

@Wayne - I haven't played the game enough to truely play around with it fully, but I believe it would be very interesting to see what happens if it simulated a true free market. A Milton Friedman free market. Though I believe to lean at an opposite to Friedman, I would love to see a country implement his ideas FULLY to see what would come of it.

Though I don't believe taxing individuals (including taxing them at a different rate) is evil, but I do believe that the loopholes, and complexities of the American tax system in particular, allow individuals who are wealthier (and work less, depending on their occupation of course) to pay less taxes than those who are not (and working harder, depending on their occupation of course). That, I believe, is absurd.

@Ahriman - Very interesting point indeed.

wayne, your emotional wish based response is a waste of reading time.

anywho Joe, crimes relationship to poverty is already in the game system i believe... and yea, i think increasing tax on the poor would SPIKE poor dissaproval, hard,

and i wonder if there is a way to tie effects into modifiers, like if there is little education spending, then a tax cut for the rich, would be loved by all, even though it would increase the wealth of the rich while decreasing the wealth of the poor and middle...

while if the population is highly educated, then that would not be the case...

Everyone knows (except congress) that you increase a deficit by spending more money than you take in. We who play democracy also know this to be true, but can also see the temptation to keep spending especially in a rigged simulation which can't truly account for a "free" market.

All that said income tax brackets can be a good idea to increase revenue to get out of debt, however it is an inherently evil system by applying a law differently to people based on how much money they earn.

Wow. Looks like we have bernie sanders here. Taxation decentivizes production because it turns private citizens into slaves to the government. If you're taxed at 50% of your income and work 10 years 5 years of your life you worked for your government overlords and fatcats. This fact is true regardless of how much income you make. At 0% taxes you greatly stimulate the economy because people will invest and take risks and create new products and services and move from poor to middle to wealthy "classes" Which is a good thing. However 0% tax also means you can't pay for the "necessary" purposes of government which is predominately national defense and diplomacy, there are very few things outside of that the federal government should consider paying for especially when it is in debt.

@Ahriman - You bring up an excellent point mentioning the poor's desperation possibly resulting in higher crime. Though I do not believe I will update this modification further, it may be feasible to increase the crime rate a small percentage upon raising lower income taxes.

Thank you for this mod, can't wait to try it out... i wish there was a progressive system in the game so you can set up rates to be reminicent of those of first world countries, but i understand that the point of the game is to win the next election, not to actually fix any problems... look at the bush tax cuts in usa early 2000s, everyone bragged about getting a "tax cut" while it actually was only a cut for those above 300,000...

the ones currently proposed in USA in recent days is much like that same scenario

but thats exactly that, the point is to win over voters, and as you can see from your comments section, people are offended by the idea of tax, so while the tax system may be good enough to keep the infrastructure alive, and programs enough to prevent the poor from becoming despirate and resorting to things like crime, people are caught up in the rhetoric.

so while i'd say thing game is more of a psychology simulator, and i am really excited to see this mod

does not work. update please

Hiking taxes on the reach causes businesses to shut down and the struggling worker to lose their jobs and starve to death. Congrats Bernie Sanders you just created venazuala. Well done.

@Doom - I understand the idea of Reaganomics. The issue is at the root. Government cuts taxes for the rich, and the rich stash that money away in their tax havens, and/or buy a third yacht. They do not open more factories for people in the same country, they still outsource, cutting jobs, getting higher Christmas bonuses. The circle doesn't complete as it doesn't work at the start.

There must be another way. That is a capitalistic-social-democratic hybrid. The Government stops taking money through their legalised bribe scheme. The Government demands from corporations they keep their jobs inside of the country. If the company leaves anyway, moving their jobs, factories, and/or their headquarters to another country to outsource, the Government implements high import fees to these companies making it more expensive to make their product in another country and import it back. These force companies to remain, and greatly discourages outsourcing.

Clearly you do not know how reaganomics works. Reaganomics in a simple guide is cut taxes to companies. This gives companies more money to higher more people. This means more jobs which means more people spending money. The more money people spend gives companies more money to spend. The thing has gone full circle.

@Dr.Schuster because the working man doesn't like giving their hard earned money to a corrupt system that recycles it into dead-end programs that don't benefit them in the slightest.

Capitalists like taxing the working class more? 46% in your graphic!

Yeah okay, not downloading this shitty liberal mod.

Each tax bracket should have income based on the number of Poor/Middle Income/Wealthy people in your nation and how high their earnings are, as opposed to a flat amount based on total population. Obviously, the higher brackets should bring in more income.

Equality should go down the more you tax the poor, and up the more you tax the rich. Taxing the middle class at either extreme should lower equality and keeping it to the center should raise it.

Capitalists should dislike all taxes.
Taxing a class should slightly increase the approval of the other two classes.
Taxing the poor should increase poverty and the homelessness red button.
Taxing the rich should increase the brain drain red button but also GDP (they can't hoard money).
All three policies should increase the tax evasion red button.

Spending for basic necessities scales much slower than income. So if you increase the taxes of a person making $20,000 person by 10% on the margin you're likely cutting into money that would be going to basic necessities whereas if you tax someone making $100,000 or $300,000 by increase 10% on the margin (assuming tax rates are reasonable to begin with), you're likely taxing incomes that would go to saving, investment or non-essential spending.

To properly align with the general theory of progressive taxation, the lowest rate should increase equality, taxing the middle class should, regardless of increase or decrease, only have a slight impact and the high income tax should increase equality. You could disagree with the basic theory behind progressive tax rates but then it wouldn't make a ton of sense to have a tax policy that breaks down along income.

@Joe If that was the case then a flat tax would increase overall equality, yet by almost all definitions of the word, economists believe it decreases equality, because there is a difference between fixed and variable spending on an individual basis.

There are some things all people need to buy. We all need shelter, we all need clothing, we all need transportation and food. Now take someone making $300,000 and a person making $20,000 per year. The person making $300,000 is making 15x more money but they are very unlikely to be spending 15x more on their food, their rent/mortgage is not going to be 15x higher nor will their transportation, food or utility costs.

@rynebrandon. If you were to raise the taxes on the lower income earners to better match the income taxes of the middle and higher income earners, there is an argument to be made that doing so would increase equality, because each individual is paying a similar amount, I.E. leveling the field. There is, however, an argument to be made that having the lower income earners spend less in taxes increases equality as it allows for them to keep more of their money, which due to their circumstances, is much more needed for them than other income earners. I'll be looking into whether or not equality will be affected at all by the bracket system because it's very subjective, as I laid out.

Why do cappies like the low income tax?

I'm not sure it makes sense for higher taxes on the poor to increase equality. It seems like it should have the opposite effect.

It's good but I find it triples income from taxes which makes the game too easy; thereby eliminating the need to 'balance the books' as an election promise, because there is already a surplus of 220B+

cool mod

"Large Update" update is released which fixes many issues; including the commented middle-income icon issue and situation and multiplier issue. We're still working on improving this modification, even if it takes some time. If any issues, errors, bugs or other insects occur with this modification, comment to let us know! Suggestions, even ones not related to this specific modification, are highly appreciated.

This seems to make the game too easy, it has no effect on tax avoidance. I love the idea, it just needs a little more work. It makes taxing the highest earners at 90%, pretty much fine; which in real life would cause an uproar.

Been needing this, thanks

Middle income doesn't have an icon?

If any issues, errors, bugs or other insects occur with this modification, comment to let us know! Suggestions, even ones not related to this specific modification, are highly appreciated.