View source for Taxation

== Overview ==

Taxation is the process in which you raise [[megacredits]]. You can tax [[colonists]] or (if any) [[native]]s. [[Amorphous]] natives do not pay taxes. There are two commonly used taxation practices. A combined maximum of 5000 [[megacredits]] may be raised per [[planet]] per turn. [[The Cyborg|Cyborg]] colonies can collect [[megacredits]] from a maximum of 20% taxes on the [[natives]].

Taxation slows the growth so dramatically that it is not always wise to tax. If you cannot get a lot of [[megacredits]] from taxing, then it is usually 
better to not tax at well as long as the population is still able to grow. Even 1% taxes slows growth to 5/6.

=== Safe Taxing ===
'''Safe taxing''' employs a constant taxation which allows [[megacredits]] to be raised every turn without decreasing [[happiness]]. As a general rule, this is not recommended, except in situations where the population cannot grow any further due to [[climate]] conditions.

=== Growth Taxing ===
'''Growth taxing''' employs spikes in taxation. On one turn, a lot of taxing can be done while no taxes are employed on subsequent turns to maximize ''growth''. This has the risk of accidentally causing riots and civil wars if this is left unchanged due to the dramastic change in [[happiness]] this imposes.

== Calculations ==

The base formula for the amount of money raised is as follows, where ''r'' is the tax rate, ''p'' is population, and ''g'' is the government modifier (for [[colonists]], ''g'' = 100):

<math>
 \operatorname{collect} = round(r * \frac{p}{1000} * \frac{g}{100})
</math>

The amount of [[megacredits]] that may be collected from natives is capped by the number of colonist [[clans]] present at a ratio of 1:1. Then bonuses from the [[The Solar Federation]] and [[Insectoids]] are applied multiplicatively (meaning that Feds taxing an Insectoid planet get 4x the money). Despite these bonuses, the final cap is still 5000 [[megacredits]].

== Riots and Civil Wars ==
When you tax colonists or natives below 40 happiness, they will begin to riot. Colonist rioting burns down factories and mines.

Note: if you tax and the population's happiness ends at 30 or less, you will not gain any tax income for that turn. For this reason, you should never tax to a level below 31 happiness if you want to get tax income. If a population's happiness drops to 30 happiness, you can no longer tax it. You must wait before happiness is above 30 before taxing again. If you try to tax, nothing will happen and the population's happiness will increase. 

Once a population's happiness drops below 0, civil war will begin. When this happens, factories on the planet will be destroyed at an increased rate, and the planet's population will lose 30% of its clans plus 100 clans per turn. Civil war will continue until happiness rises to 0 again. 

==== Deliberately starting riots ====
When a planet is out of minerals but has natives to tax, it can be useful to demolish the buildings (to increase native happiness, and therefore taxes). By taxing colonists down below 40 happiness, buildings will be destroyed at a rate of 8 factories per turn and 10 mines per turn. You can tax natives below 40 happiness at the same time as colonists, to speed up building destruction (11 factories and 15 mines destroyed per turn). 
The reason this works is that population happiness goes down by 1 for every 200 buildings on a planet. For a planet with good natives, this can be a lot of MC of lost taxation every turn. 

==== Deliberately starting civil wars ====
To ruin an enemy planet, you can overtax the natives below 0 happiness so that they enter civil war. This will cause the native population to be reduced by ~30% per turn, which will ruin their value as a tax base. The most effective way to destroy a native population through civil war is to tax down to 31 happiness on one turn, and then tax as much as possible on the next turn. This will bring the native's happiness well below zero, which will lead to many turns of civil war. Since civil war kill both natives and colonists, the planet will also become difficult for players to occupy, since many colonist clans will be killed every turn. (The minimum number of clans you need on a planet to survive one turn of civil war is 144, which will leave you with 1 clan).