Tax Rate

Clicking on the Details tab while selecting a settlement in a province (for illustration see Example of Optimising Province Income page) will show the tax rate modifier for that province. A tax rate of +0% doesn’t give you zero income, but modifies the base summed settlement income neither upwards nor downwards. The tax rate is adjusted to 5 different levels faction-wide by one slider for all provinces found by clicking the Trade and Finance tab on the bottom centre of the main campaign screen. There is a basic minimum level of tax gained by setting the slider down to the lowest level. Again, this does not give zero tax income, but a modification of the summed wealth total, e.g. -20%. So the actual income after this modification (without slave or corruption modifiers) would be 80% of the raw income. Each position rightward on the slider raises the tax modifier by 20%, so in this example the levels would be -20%, +0%, +20%, +40% and +60%.

Actual tax rates vary between provinces and over time; faction wide modifiers can be gained by technologies researched and by wonders. The slider simply shifts this rate for each province up and down in 20% increments; in the example above, if I then acquired a +3% tax rate from technologies and +3% tax rate from a wonder, the slider would change that province’s rates between -14%, 6%, 26%, 46% and 66%.

Each position of the slider gives a faction-wide penalty. So whether the bottom level of the slider sets tax to -20% or -14% in a particular province, the penalty across all provinces is -1 public order in each province, and no growth penalty. At the highest level the penalty is -15 public order in each province and -3 growth in each province.

In addition to the faction-wide modifiers to tax rate, there are province-wide modifiers. These include friendly agents in the area, enemy agents in the area, the implementation of the tax harvesting Edict, or having an inspired population due to public order being near +100.

The only way to adjust taxation independently in a province, short of new buildings or new agents, is to uncheck the Tax Province box on the top left of the details screen. This sets the tax modifier for that province to -100%, i.e. the actual income from the province is now zero. The benefit is no public order penalty, which as you will see from above is only one better than the faction-wide leftmost slider position.

The other big effect of this tax exemption is wiping out any province food surplus or shortage (see below section on food).