We need to change the way the facility tax is applied to industry jobs. Right now the facility tax % is a percent of the system cost index which is variable.
I propose two ways if could be made better for the facility owner
1st - Industry facility tax is changed to a % of base item cost just like the cost index instead of multiplied with the cost index.
2nd - Move the facility tax back to an hourly charge.
This would make figuring out what to set a facility tax at to recover fuel cost a whole lot easier than the current moving target.
Could you explain, from your perspective, why basing the facility tax on the system cost index is a problem? Why it needs to be changed?
I ask because I was under the impression that the mechanic of system cost index was designed to encourage spreading out and to discourage player structure spam in high-index systems. Sure, it’s a bit of an inconvenience for the owners of the facilities, but it seems healthier for the game overall.
I’ll add that I’m not very knowledgable of the industry side of the game. Rather than being critical of your idea, I’m looking for edification.
Not true. The job cost is the Estimated Item Value times the System Cost Index. The estimated Item Value is a moving average and you have no way of knowing what or how much will be produced in the future. The only thing you know for sure is the amount of use your facility gets will be inversely proportional to the tax rate.
One is manufacturing index. two to three characters can push a system over 2% index or can lazily maintain somewhere between one and two. If the facility tax is set at 5% the structure owner gets 3x the isk at 3% vs 1%.
I’m just trying to point out with the current scheme the owner and builder takes the bulk of the fuel cost and gets a tiny portion from anyone else who uses the service. I guess its not a big deal and i’ve done a workaround where i rent a corp office at a facility i want to support to give the owner a meaningful chunk of isk.
A structure owner benefits from a higher cost index because their income per job is directly calculated as a portion of the sci. The expense of maintaining the service, however, is a constant, regardless of where the structure is placed.
Contrast the above with Refining. With refining, the tax rate is a flat percentage of the material either input or output (probably output, but which it is doesn’t affect the comparison). This tax rate is easily compared among the available structures for the refining service and a corporation or individual can select one according to their political motives, willingness to travel, or willingness to pay for convenient location. An apples to apples comparison, if you will.
For manufacturing and similar services based on the SCI, there are a number of difficulties. I live in a system at present with an SCI of 0.23%. That means that if I were to set the tax rate at the cap of 50%, I would be able to charge at most 0.125% the value of the industry job, while at the same time players searching for my structure see an astronomical 50% tax rate.
A person living in a system with a theoretical 2.30% SCI could set their tax rate at a mere 5%, which looks far more reasonable, and get the same payout of 0.125%. This comparison is more apples to oranges, in addition to encouraging people to place even more structures in busy systems rather than setting up in un-tapped markets.
The only opposing force encouraging players to spread out is that of competition, but in a busy system that 0.1% tax a structure owner sets can be worth 20 times as much as it would have been elsewhere, lowering the incentive to strike out far from home unless your customers are savvy enough to do their homework to see why your higher taxes are actually a better deal.