[MoF] How does the budget work?
Ministerie van Economische Zak
Greetings, citizens of Netherlands,
there is often confusion regarding the actual income and budget of Netherlands. While there is an entire Tab filled with numbers in our Finance Sheet, not many people can interpret the numbers correctly. And with Training Wars and Rental Concessions, it is difficult to establish, how big our actual tax income really is. Do not worry though - we have prepared a short explanation for you, as well as an update in the Finance Sheet, which should make things more clear for you!
First of all, let's look at the way, how the government can earn money. There are currently 8 methods listed as sources of income in our Finance Sheet:
Dutch Tax Income - tax income, which we receive daily in our treasury thanks to various taxes (work tax, VAT, Import,...)
Tax Returns - when we have Training War on our territory, part of our actual tax income goes to the country, which occupies our regions. Those money are returned weekly to us.
Concession Fee - this one is a bit trickier. Iran pays us currently 100.000 currency for renting our resources. However, due to the (annoying) mechanics of rental concessions, Iran also has to compensate part of our actual tax income, which is lost due to increased City Taxes. What is that? Basically, City Tax is a mechanic introduced by Plato, which eats 10% of COUNTRY INCOME for no good reason whatsoever. However, money received via rental concessions are also counted in the COUNTRY INCOME, so the 10% loss is much bigger for us during the rental concession. As this loss would not exist without rental concessions being active, Iran is compensating us for this loss.
From previous month - often, governments are generous, and they will let the next government inherit all their unspent budget. As this can quickly escalate into huge rollovers of money, which could be used in better way, we are trying to eliminate the rollovers by making actual spendings during each term.
Medal Tax - as per Law, Congress and President pay (EDIT: at minimum) 50% of their income from the Congress/President Medal.
Donations - donations of citizens to our treasury, a lot of them unknown (meaning their author cannot be traced)
Emergency Funds - would be used in case of serious emergencies. Should be equal to 0 most of the time.
Monetary Market - the Monetary Market program is currently very active, and each month, MG (the leader of monetary market) can offer his earnings on MM as part of the next month's budget. If these money are not used, they go back to the Monetary Market Program to further generate more income.
That is a lot of methods, how to earn money. However, how do we differentiate the income caused by our taxes from other sources of income? Well... due to Training Wars and Rental Concessions, the task is quite difficult. And while we cannot say the exact numbers on individual taxes (though, we can make a good estimate of percentage of their influence on tax income, as explained here), we are thankfully still able to calculate our actual tax income. The tax income, which our Treasury would receive directly, if we had no training wars and rental concessions going on.
If you have been paying attention until now, you already know the answer! The actual tax income can be established by adding together the income generated by the first three methods, while subtracting the (currently 100.000) currency paid for the existence of rental concession deal.
With that said - how big is therefore our actual tax income? Well, thanks to the new updates in Finance Sheet, which were done few hours ago, you can find out in both numerical and graphical form! As graphs are easier to interpret for regular citizens, we will use the graphical form in the article summarizing last four budgets:
From the graph, you can see that our actual tax income is around the 350 000 - 400 000 currency per month. We can also see that monetary market is currently a good place to invest, as it generates more and more income in recent months.
Of course, thanks to the new updates in Finance Sheet, we will be able to track data like these further, without having to do any extra necessary work. The government hopes following these trends will help us to optimize our budgets and sources of income for the future.
If you have any questions, please let them to be heard in the comments!
Comments
Medal Tax is -at least- 50% of the income of the medals, not exact 50%. Some parties indeed pay the minimum.
Ha, that's correct!
‘often, governments are generous, and they will let the next government inherit all their unspent budget.’
The budget of the Government of the eNetherlands cannot exceed the tax income of the previous month. An additional budget can be awarded by congressional approval.
Indeed, but for the last few months we don't apply this 'trick' an ymore unless there is something really pressing 😃
Yes, the legality of these rollovers in indeed dubious - I think they should not be done, and money should be spent as the Law says. However both my recent predecessors used the method, so it needs to be mentioned as source of income for people to understand.
We debated with Weekstrom lately, the part of Law you quote by the way - if you took the paragraph word by word ("the tax income"), it could actually have a huge consequence, as tax income 😕= income. Seems like a topic to discuss for the future!
* I always forget, that if you write "=" and then "/", it makes emoji... basically, tax income and income can be understood as separate entities.
I only quoted to show how the government works with a Law that states something else. Another point that these parts of the Lawbook can be removed. If they are ignored anyway. Lets have a look on my 500 word proposal again.
Graphs (L)
This is a clear case where stacked lines should have been used 🙈
Would start MoNC on that, seems like a good reason.
A much more relevant article than your previous one
I hope you actually learned something from it for once 😉 !
I think I know most, but I would like to see some detail on the Tax Returns from TW's as this is unclear to me. German tax income on NL soil in the German country page and calculate from here? https://imgur.com/tYyPuwa if so, what is the formula used?
Highly doubt you know "the most", but positive thinking is always good 🙂 .
Indeed, "German returns" are done from Germany Economic Page. Of course, you need to separate "concession part" and "taxes part", which is easily done, because "concession part" is easily calculated as: "Total Concession" - "Concession given to Dutch Treasury". And when you subtract "concession part" from "German returns", you indeed get the "taxes part", which is the Tax Returns from TW's.
Thanks for the answer. I wonder what compulsion makes you always have to express doubts about other peoples understanding of things. I read back my comment and can't find something you might have taken the wrong way...
Well, I have read some of your previous economic articles, so do not be surprised about having doubts that "you know the most". But you are getting to the point of learning more, so that is good. Other citizens should follow that trend as well!
Do you mean this one: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2694357. Or this one: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2693923 ?