Tax rate

The tax rate is the amount at which you tax your citizen’s income on a daily basis.

Example
Suppose you have a citizen that earns $100 a day and you have a tax rate set at 25%. You will collect $25 from this citizen per day. If you have 50 citizens in your nation then you will collect ($25 x 50) = $1250 from your population in income taxes per day.

Population Happiness
Lowering your tax rate lowers the percentage of taxes each of your citizens pay on their income but increases your population happiness. The happier your population is the more money they will make, so sometimes lower tax rates will earn you more money than would a higher tax rate.


 * 10% - 16% = +0 population happiness
 * 21% - 23% = -3 population happiness
 * 24% - 25% = -5 population happiness
 * 26% - 28% = -7 population happiness

Tax Interest
If you don't collect your taxes each day you will earn 8% interest on the uncollected amount. In addition, if you don't pay your bills each day you will be charged a 10% interest on the unpaid amount. After 3 days of not paying bills you will be prevented from making any purchases until the bills are paid.

FAQ

 * Is it cheating to change my tax rate to 28% just before collecting taxes and then change it back to 10% just after collecting taxes?

It's true, a lower tax rate will improve population happiness. However, the only factor that is affected by population happiness is your population's taxable income. The only time that your population's taxable income comes into play is when you collect taxes. Therefore, lowering your tax rate when you are not collecting taxes has absolutely no affect on the game beyond appearance. In other words, if you raise your tax rate when you collect taxes, your population happiness will automatically be lowered and the game will think that your tax rate was at the highest rate for the entire day. So no, it's not cheating.