Like the title says, change the main taxable event from trade to manufacturing.
Something that doesn’t produce any value like the mere exchange of existing goods shouldn’t be the main taxable event. Tax should occur when value is added, which is during production. Manufacturing fees are currently a joke, ship destruction is currently even an ISK faucet instead of a sink.
Increase the ISK cost of manufacturing so the ridiculous broker/sales fees can be lowered. It will lead to a more balanced system of isk sinks and faucets where destruction is actually removing ISK from the game and where trade isn’t artificially punished.
For actual implementation increase manufacturing fees so manufacturing becomes a sink of around 10b isk. Increase the effect of transaction tax reducing skills so it doesn’t look like you are backpedaling on the fee changes and to dissuade alpha bots.
That’s objectively wrong. And if you actually believe this, you have no place complaining about the market. Tranquility Trading Towers in Perimeter is literally the reason why the prices in Jita are the way they are.
Everyone buys or sells things, not everyone builds things. The tax for trading at least effects everyone rather then punishing just one group, manufacturers.
Trade in structures should subject to a flat 2% brokers fee. 2.4 additional Trillions of ISK remain in the economy for no good reason whatsoever. This needs to change.
Manufacturing and research are already taxed. The job cost is the cost of the item being produced multiplied by the system cost index (an reflection of local labor cost). This is in turn multiplied by the tax rate set by the station owner (10% for NPC stations).
Taxes are really only a problem if the playing field is not level. If they are the same for everyone (other than the small differences from skills and standing) you simply include them in your cost and add your profit margin on top. Set your floor price to guarantee a reasonable profit and don’t chase the market below that - let it come to you.
If everything in New Eden that was ever sold on the market was manufactured by players, you would could make a pretty strong argument for what you’re proposing.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Look at high price and/or high volume items like rare NPC drops, PLEX, pilot services (skill points in particular, etc.) and how much ISK those things generate in taxes and brokers fees. If we switched to focus ISK sinks more on manufacturing, trading in these items wouldn’t produce any sort of ISK sink, which would likely lead to massive ISK inflation.
-1. Interesting idea in theory, but wouldn’t work in practice.