The tax is an important part of keeping the game economy flowing. Money flows into the players’ hands from the Central Guild via the progression system (and some other ways yet to be implemented), and out via tax back into the hands of the Central Guild. By adjusting the rates of this flow in or out, we can control inflation and liquidity.
Boundless is a player driven game and we want as much of the game as possible to be in your hands. To this aim, it is the intention for player Guilds to take over aspects of control from the Central Guild, including tax. We have to be a bit careful here as an out of control economy won’t be good for anyone, so I can’t imagine a situation where all tax will be player controlled, but getting as close to that is possible is the intention.
In terms of displaying tax, it’s currently set up to be as simple as possible for each person involved, at the expense of overall clarity. So for someone selling items on their plinth they see the amount of money they will get, for example if they want to sell 5 hammers and they type in 100 Coin per hammer, when they come back they will have no hammers and 500 Coin ready to be picked up. From their point of view, that’s simple. For the buyer of the hammers, they will see a price 110 Coin per hammer, so if they choose to buy them they have to spend 550 Coin. From their point of view that’s simple. The difficulty is that those players don’t know how much tax has been added. We can easily add that (we do need to do another pass on those screens), but it will add complexity which is not always desirable especially for a beginning player. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on that.