And Then There's the 8.5% For the Church of Bane's Public Works Fund

[Libertad]

If you've got a Wizard in town who is capable of generating 1000gp in economic value EVERY day, and a Turnip Farmer who might clear a 10gp profit for the year, it makes no sense to have them taxed via the same methodology, especially if that methodology is an irrelevant Feudal English land tax.

I always figured that spellcasters were sort of their own societies, such as wizard's towers which had water-generators and wall of force and otherwise self-sustaining stuff.  Every so often they'd trade their magic stuff for political leverage, but wouldn't flood the market so as to dilute their value and usability.

Or spellcasters just became useful and revered members of communities, like how in Skyrim the Jarls often had court wizards whose magic stuff gave them privileges.  Better to make mages part of the government than to treat them as an independent merchant.

[oslecamo]

I always figured that spellcasters were sort of their own societies, such as wizard's towers which had water-generators and wall of force and otherwise self-sustaining stuff.  Every so often they'd trade their magic stuff for political leverage, but wouldn't flood the market so as to dilute their value and usability.

The thing many people  assume is that spellcasters have great inter-people skills and know about economics and whatnot. But that's hardly a given. Even in the real world talented/smart people who make wondrous inventions still depend on advisors/financers/organizers to coordinate their work and find ways to have their inventions produce profit.

So you have the mages producing magic stuff, but then you still need other skilled people to take care of distribution and negotiations.

Of course that also means there will probably be both "government mages" that work close with the local authority, and "private mages" that form more independent organizations, but probably have less political leverage due to lack of contacts as well.

[Raineh Daze]

I always figured that spellcasters were sort of their own societies, such as wizard's towers which had water-generators and wall of force and otherwise self-sustaining stuff.  Every so often they'd trade their magic stuff for political leverage, but wouldn't flood the market so as to dilute their value and usability.

The thing many people  assume is that spellcasters have great inter-people skills and know about economics and whatnot. But that's hardly a given. Even in the real world talented/smart people who make wondrous inventions still depend on advisors/financers/organizers to coordinate their work and find ways to have their inventions produce profit.

So you have the mages producing magic stuff, but then you still need other skilled people to take care of distribution and negotiations.

Of course that also means there will probably be both "government mages" that work close with the local authority, and "private mages" that form more independent organizations, but probably have less political leverage due to lack of contacts as well.

Sounds to me like the wizards can produce the most variety of stuff, but they'll always end up poorer than sorcerers due to lack of ability to market their stuff (or, consequently, having to pay other people to do it). Casting from Charisma has got to have benefits.

[oslecamo]

Fully agreed, Charisma is definetely not a dump stat when you have to interact with other people. Extra spell slots for mass casting doesn't hurt either.

[Arturick]

Unless you're playing in the Tippyverse, the vast majority of games are in a bizarre medieval stasis.

My campaigns tend to be "not quite Tippyverse, but starting to realize the possibilities."

D&D is a mix of medeival styling layered over concepts that are exceedingly modern and combined with stuff that never happened.  If I have a magical metropolis in my D&D game, it will generally resemble Chicago of the 1920's more than Florence of the 1400's.

...  First off, seriously? The kind of infrastructure required renders it pretty absurd. Second, and really more importantly, why should we care? If you're going to just ignore the pretty obvious and crippling problems with that, why even bring up taxation in the first place?

Ah yes... infrastructure.  If only there were people with magic powers and infinite planes of bureaucrats.

This appears to just be a massive "One True Way^tm" bait thread.

Yeah, because I totally told everyone somewhere in one of my threads how they're supposed to play.  I asked if anyone had done anything interesting with taxation in their campaigns.  Some people said "yes."  Some people said "no."  Some people thought I needed a history lesson.  I said I don't need a history lesson because I'm not trying to replicate a specific segment of Europe that might have existed between 1000 and 1800 AD and I, personally, don't think the nature of the game really lends itself to doing so.

I always figured that spellcasters were sort of their own societies, such as wizard's towers which had water-generators and wall of force and otherwise self-sustaining stuff.  Every so often they'd trade their magic stuff for political leverage, but wouldn't flood the market so as to dilute their value and usability.

My campaigns generally assume that many Wizards don't want to live the "crazy hermit" lifestyle, and are willing to make certain concessions to be accepted by a society that might otherwise hate and fear them.  Also, I run games in (modified) Forgotten Realms, where the Red Wizards have made MagicMart an official thing with competitive pricing.  Their shops are also considered sovereign territory, meaning they get to bypass many taxes, tariffs, and regulations.

[KicktheCAN]

In my latest campaign the PCs are part of a VC-funded startup so they have to pay back their initial loan. I find that players either enjoy trying to cheat the system or just hate it.

[Nunkuruji]

Typically I've seen that in modules the city-states would have an entry fee for non-citizen or merchants.

Guards at the gate would rifle through your shit, demand X sum (and/or bribe), then give you papers.

Then again, there could certainly be a LE Cleric/Wizard of <Insert Greed Deity> running the coffers using CoP/etc to figure out who made what and demanding taxes.

It's kind of hard to figure out who makes what in terms of sales transactions, so it's more likely that only fairly permanent taxes are levied, such as Property Tax.