Traveller and Taxes

[DanDare]

"There is nothing so certain as death and taxes". That's how the saying goes. And yet as far as I can tell none of the core Traveller rules have anything to say about taxes. I find that puzzling given that ship trade and economics is so carefully worked out.

In a setting like the Imperium there are mighty war fleets and vast bureaucracies like the Scout Service that have personnel and even provide cut rate fuel and ships to their retired pilots. How do they pay for it all?

If not taxes is there some form of scutage or obligatory duty period? Do only vast corporations pay taxes? Or does the Imperium lean on the planets under its umbrella. If so then surely those worlds tax people and charge huge docking fees and and try to own resource monopolies to pay for things? Maybe the feudal lords get taxed but then they should spend much of their time oppressing the peasants to get the necessaries to pay.

Does anyone have taxation in their game that effects the players? Just curious.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Taxes

As a Referee, I use Mongoose Traveller's Merchant Prince supplement taxes section to shave off what I can from the personal and corporation credit accounts.

Whenever the characters earn money, I check to see if it is taxable and visible to the local powers that be. Black market deals are often missed by the authorities, but still worthy of a Law Check, 2d6 vs. local Law rating of a world.

When the authorities detect a transaction, they attempt to tax the trade. Some incomes are taxed before the goods arrive or passengers board the vessel. Others are taxed on the destination and sell-off of speculatives and delivery of freight.

Taxation authorities are often overworked and too much trade is occurring at one time for them to catch every transaction, especially if they do not have the Technology Level to track each sale and purchase. A Referee should take both Government Level, Law Level and Tech Level into account. Trade traffic is also a factor that can cloak deals without Big Brother Taxation looking over one's shoulder.

Taxes, berthing, repairs, maintenance, life support, vessel/vehicle upgrades, equippage, weapon ammunition, fuel, licensing (for various tasks) and a sundry of other hidden fees can be the moneysink that a Referee can tap to keep those credits draining.

Excuse me. My jailors are taking me out of this dungeon, to 'convert' me to their ways or so they believe.

From a lightless dungeon on OENLAETSVAEG (Goekhnael 1938), this is the Pakkrat for Net-7 News.

 

[Timerover51]

There are also no custom duties to pay on imported cargo, so a lot is missing. For that matter, some planets could also charge export duties on products, such as Liquid H if they are short of water. I do have that in my home rules. Taxes on personnel like Free Trade crews might get a bit complicated to administer, as they might not land at their home port for quite a while. I subsume that in port landing fees.

 

[maksimsmelchak]

*** Is there any standardized tax regimen for the Third Imperium? ***

I can't recall ever having read about one...

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

 

[whartung]

I'm betting there's not a whole lot about taxes in the ruleset because, in general, taxes are not fun…at all.

It's also fair to say, to a point, that they're universal. Basically, taxes are everywhere. Everywhere enough to the point that modeling them and making them a first class citizen in the play experience is simply acknowledging overhead.

From a game mechanic perspective, you can simply say "10% of everything goes to taxes". Or raise the price of everything by 10% and go "there, see? taxes.".

Capital flight to avoid taxes I don't think makes for a very interesting Amber Zone, frankly. It's bad enough the crew has to be down 2 weeks a year to do ship maintenance, role playing a stop in at the accountants to get their taxes filed -- I dunno, I can just think of more interesting things to do as part of the game play experience.

But, that's just me.

 

[Timerover51]

*** Is there any standardized tax regimen for the Third Imperium? ***

I can't recall ever having read about one...

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

Is there not something in Trillion Credit Squadron about government revenues? Although I am not sure if that would apply to the Imperium.

Corollary, would Imperial Nobles pay taxes?

 

[kilemall]

For plain jane transporting cargo, the ship operator is just hauling and wouldn't take on those costs anyway.

Speculative cargo, you could say the starport is a 'foreign trade zone', no taxes until it moves into or out of the starport to the planet. As such, starports could represent a huge manufacturing and warehousing extraterritorial operation over and above transport activities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_trade_zones_of_the_United_States

So when the players sell to the locals wanting the speculative good, THE LOCALS will be the ones paying to move it into the planet, and when the players buy they are paying for goods already in the starport warehousing area.

Another mechanism is to just assume taxation is built into every item and service price already, and the proportion of what part of the cost is actual cost/profit, what is taxation, and what is subsidized, is not material.

TCS provides a 'naval tax' mechanism and Striker a model for funding planetary armies, TCS in particular has a 'war and peace' percentage that each government type will come up with for their navies.

Finally, you could probably work out a tax regimen that increases with each law level, but is subverted by the bribery flipside of LL and so the average revenue works out to about LL 5-6.

 

[kilemall]

Is there not something in Trillion Credit Squadron about government revenues? Although I am not sure if that would apply to the Imperium.

Corollary, would Imperial Nobles pay taxes?

TCS indeed does, but it is geared to paying for fleets and not the myriad of things governments could be doing otherwise. It would be a starting point, not a working system.

TCS assumes a naval tax per citizen charged at the local credit exchange rate based on TL and starport.

Presumably that could be evenly charged, or whatever rule the planet has that makes sense as long as the money is forwarded to the reigning empire.

 

[kilemall]

I'm betting there's not a whole lot about taxes in the ruleset because, in general, taxes are not fun…at all.

In general, agreed, except that a high tax level planet is INVITING tax cheating smuggling to occur, and that IS an adventure hook.

All mechanics should go to making for story and action, and taxes could be used for that purpose.

I recall reading about how milk was smuggled to avoid taxes, and there are always people popping up selling cigarettes without the onerous tobacco taxation here in the states, so even relatively innocuous taxable items can become grist for the illegal operations mill.

The Law Level mechanism should suffice for taxation smuggling, although the optimal smuggling LL might be 7- too high a bribery success chance with the higher LLs to bother risking smuggling otherwise!

 

[Condottiere]

The Imperial bureaucracy gives each planet a tab of how much they plan to collect for the next decade, probably on an annual basis, based on their estimate of the planetary GDP.

How the planetary authorities plan to pay the Imperium for services, rendered or not, is up to them. Within legal boundaries.

 

[mike wightman]

The Imperium taxes its member worlds, not its citizens directly.

Individual worlds are left to their own devices as to how they raise their Imperial taxation money.

Subsector dukes have the responsibility of ensuring that worlds pay their taxes, and probably get a fair old slice of this income to spend on Imperial related projects within their subsector.
The Emperor (and /or the Imperial bureaucracy) will decide how much a subsector duke gets, how much goes to the Imperoal military services, how much goes to the Imperial civil services and how much goes into the Emperor's private piggy bank.

 

[DanDare]

I'm glad I asked the question. Lots of fruitful ideas here.

My general approach is to build a 'realistic' consistency into the setting. Players are burdened by it only in that it might make a generic % drag on their resources and lead them to consider tax dodging adventures of their own. The big pay off,as others have suggested, is the adventures based around such such things. I can immagine friction between barrons where each is trying to build a black fund pit to allow them to operator extra fleets and monopoly operations.

 

[flykiller]

Is there not something in Trillion Credit Squadron about government revenues?

the rule states how much money is available. it says nothing about how the money is acquired.

Corollary, would Imperial Nobles pay taxes?

absolutely not. defeats the purpose. nobles dispose of taxes, not pay them.

however, if a senior noble is making the rounds visiting, the host noble will be expected to throw lavish parties and exhibit what he is making available for the empire's use ....

The Imperium taxes its member worlds, not its citizens directly ... I can immagine friction between barrons

how I do it. nobles strive to build up their fiefs as a demonstration of their own value to the imperium.

 

[aramis]

Corollary, would Imperial Nobles pay taxes?

absolutely not. defeats the purpose. nobles dispose of taxes, not pay them.

Actually, historically, it's only royals who don't pay taxes. Nobles always paid a tax directly to their liege, and if vauvassars or lesser, their liege paid the next rank up.

The effective tax on an average knight, vassal of a baron, and thus a vauvassar, was a tenth their income, plus 40 days owed service to their liege...
So the crown got 1% of a typical knight's fee, and 10% of the demesne... at least when the crown was actually scary enough to get paid in full by the great barons.

Almost all the lesser nobility paid a tithe to the local lord, too.

 

[flykiller]

historically

history has its own reasons for existing, and does not merely continue on into the future.

do imperial nobles own their territories? is, say, mora, the property of some noble? then one might say those nobles pay taxes, sure. are imperial nobles simply part of a super-citizenry? are they simply participants in the imperium? then one might say they forward funds rather than pay taxes.

imtu the worlds are their own and have their own cultures, governments, and systems. the imperium rules "the space between the stars", i.e. the starports and off-world functions.

 

[Condottiere]

The Imperial Bureaucracy probably collects and audits directly.

The nobility is only responsible if the accounts don't add up, and then will have the opportunity to correct any discrepancies from their bailiwicks, probably have a wide latitude as to how to reconcile their accounts, or at least the jurisdictions under them to cough up the funds.

 

[pendragonman]

Actually, historically, it's only royals who don't pay taxes. Nobles always paid a tax directly to their liege, and if vauvassars or lesser, their liege paid the next rank up.

The effective tax on an average knight, vassal of a baron, and thus a vauvassar, was a tenth their income, plus 40 days owed service to their liege...
So the crown got 1% of a typical knight's fee, and 10% of the demesne... at least when the crown was actually scary enough to get paid in full by the great barons.

Almost all the lesser nobility paid a tithe to the local lord, too.

Just like the mob. Each boss gets a taste

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Well, since Traveller is based on the Roman model of government, here's a primer on how they did things back then when it came to taxes...

http://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-taxes.php

 

[Timerover51]

I'm glad I asked the question. Lots of fruitful ideas here.

My general approach is to build a 'realistic' consistency into the setting. Players are burdened by it only in that it might make a generic % drag on their resources and lead them to consider tax dodging adventures of their own. The big pay off,as others have suggested, is the adventures based around such such things. I can immagine friction between barrons where each is trying to build a black fund pit to allow them to operator extra fleets and monopoly operations.

Interesting, considering the time of year this is.

 

[aramis]

Just like the mob. Each boss gets a taste

Mafiosi, Nobility, so complimentary in behavior, and opposed to each the other in practice.

Riffing on a theme, and noting for Flykiller's lack of recollection, the Nobles of the 3rd Imperium in explicitly do have to pay taxes. The following specifically is about the High Nobles, to put it in context...

[index]Protocols aside, nobles have few obligations in terms of provision for each other, notwithstanding the payment of taxes, attendance of summits, and settlement of disputes that fall within each other’s jurisdictions. Members of the peerage are largely autonomous and have few restrictions on their activities, especially if they are in a backwater.
(MT IE, p. 14.)[/index]

We know that the subsector dukes get 1/3 of the local military budget, by law and custom, from every world in their see. (Striker)
It's implied they pass some up to the sector level... I would assume 1/3...

Which would make the sector fleet budget 1/9 of the military budgets of all worlds under Imperial governance. Worlds that don't want to support the Imp Military have to not spend on their own local one... which is an interesting social situation. A pacifist world might train only a minor handful medics or MP's, and use them on-world as SWAT forces... THe hawks would naturally build both more local and support more subsector and imperial forces...