Trying to understand corporations, I keep seeing very different tax rates — some corps advertise 0% tax like it’s a huge selling point, while others sit at 10–15% and still claim they offer “better value.”
On the surface, lower tax seems strictly better. But is that actually true in practice?
For example, If a corp takes 10% tax but runs regular buyback programs, SRP, structures, boosts, and organized PvE fleets, does that usually outweigh the raw ISK you lose?
Is 0% tax sometimes a red flag for inactive leadership or lack of infrastructure?
At what income level does tax percentage meaningfully start to matter for a player?
I’m trying to determine whether focusing on tax rate as a recruitment metric is naïve, or whether it genuinely makes a measurable long-term difference.
Thank you.
I’m guessing you’re looking at highsec corps. Never join a highsec corp with taxes, it’s just a way to monetise people who don’t know better. Corp taxes are supposed to finance SRP and structures, yeah, but the corp needs to actually have and do these things. In almost all cases newbie highsec corps have taxes just so the CEO can have a bit of passive income.
Unless you’re not looking for anything out of a corp, a 0% tax corp is a red flag.
A corp that offers 0% tax doesn’t have ISK to offer anything else, so you’re just part of it for tax evasion, which can be nice on specific characters but would not be my recommendation for the corp of your main character. You’re going to lose out on a large part of the cooperative part of this game in such a corp.
Corporations that support their members with infrastructure for living, trading, industry or moon mining, or support their members with ship replacement programs (SRP) will have expenses.
Those expenses need to be paid for somehow. That’s usually done with a small tax.
A social corp with it’s own infrastructure and other support will easily outweigh ‘zero tax’ if the infrastructure is set up well.
If there’s tax but you see nothing for it in return that of course is a red flag too, but a (reasonable and nonzero) tax itself is what I would expect from good corps.
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Fuelling a refinery or a moon drill, which are the biggest expenses I see highsec corps having, is not expensive. Financing it with ore buyback would be considerably more tolerable to me, because at least then you’re also benefitting from the “tax” by not having to haul your moon goo around.
Even though fueling refineries and moon drills in highsec isn’t actually that expensive, taxes are always controversial.
If a corp funds fuel through ore buyback, isn’t that basically a tax too — just packaged as convenience?
If buyback is basically just a “softer” tax that people accept more easily because it comes with convenience, is the difference economic, or just psychological because members feel like they’re getting something in return? Or does it actually create more value for members compared to straight percentage taxes seeing that Market prices fluctuate anyway?