So the question is should tax be moved to net income rather than gross
In about a week I plan to put up a poll, if we get 60%+ in either direction we will go with community consensus. If in the middle it will be an admin call although I think the bias in that case will be no change. For the record, we don't plan to make all the decisions by a vote, mangame has never been a democracy, but I think this issue is a pretty big one and neither answer creates a ton of work so it doesn't matter from a pure administrative point of view.
In the meantime this is the place to make the case either way if you feel strongly, campaign if you will. Feel free to copy your comments from earlier discussions.
The exact choices will be (a) Stick with taxing gross income or (b) go to net (income - spending) but increase the tax rates to 15% from 500k to 1.0 M and 25% above $1.0 M. The increase in tax rates is intended to take some of the extra money out of the game. But that isn't set in stone and the final proposal could depend on the discussion here.
Some stats from the past offseason to inform the discussion. The columns represent:
- Actual Tax paid under current gross system
- Tax that would have been paid under a net system with increased rates
- Decrease in taxes between the first two (total reduction of 3.1M)
Per team amounts are per team paying tax, teams who pay zero are excluded from the denominator. So the count goes down with a net tax but the average per team doesn't because net buying teams no longer have any tax and aren't int he denominator.
Also keep in mind changing the tax method will change behavior which makes the net tax numbers likely inaccurate
Happy to see this open for discussion and vote. I reckon I'm not the most financially savy manager around so would welcome managers who have previously voiced their opinions to remind ignorant guys like me of the pros and cons of this.
Iirc the Tax System once was implemented to get money out of the system mainly. By going net we again bring money into the system by reducing the money going out.
Which basically changes the whole point of having the tax at all.
So it's not really about pro and cons imo but about if we still want to get money out of the system or not.
Would be interesting as well to see a poll for different division managers as usually the rich are in PT that are impacted the most.
I agree with roturn that in large part, this is a question of principle - do you want more money in the system or not (and I would add: knowing that this extra money will largely be in the hands of teams that already have existing high-value assets).
I would like to add two points (that I have also made in the suggestions thread), sort of as counters to two of the main arguments for net tax. One argument is that in the real world, businesses also don't get taxed on gross income and that it would be terrible for them if they were, and if you don't run a profit, you shouldn't be taxed for going net zero.
Here, I just don't think the real world is a good framework to examine this question. We don't sell riders to make a profit, pay dividends or even cover our running costs. As long as we have enough riders going into transfers, we could do nothing at all and be fine (as in, we can continue to participate). We don't run a business, we can't go bankrupt.
Instead, the way I see it, what selling riders does is increase the scope of what you can do beyond what your initial budget allows you to. This sounds trivial, but I think it does change the perspective. Because then the question isn't "Did you spend more or less money on riders than you got from sales" but instead "How much money are you free to spend on anything during this transfer period?"
And then the comparison between net and gross is: Should there be a difference between raising 500k of additional funds, or 2M (i.e. with gross tax, if you want to spend 2M, you're going to have to sell riders worth a bit more than that). To be clear, in essence, this is: Should the advantage of teams with existing high-value assets be curbed a bit? This is obviously a personal opinion, but looking at the rates of promoting teams immediately relegating again, and relegating teams bouncing back quickly, I'm in favor of it.
And to reiterate, we're not talking about increasing the existing disadvantage to more than it currently is. Net taxation would just remove that disadvantage (at least when it comes to buying riders - it would still apply, though also to a lesser extent, for teams investing into training). Ultimately, and like roturn said, this is a balancing decision.
Another argument is that gross taxes incentivize and unfairly benefit rider swaps. I agree with this completely, I think it's the best argument for net tax and I think this needs to be addressed. But in my opinion, the better way to go is to tax rider swaps in some way. Ideas have been floated, such as an increase in wages of swapped riders, or taxes based on the wages of the riders involved. It won't be easy to figure out the specifics, but I think the downsides (i.e. more money in the system and more imbalance between top teams and the rest) of going to net taxation outweigh this.
All that said, similar to Gustavovsky I haven't been dealing much in these dimensions (this year more than ever before, but still), so this is mostly theory and observations from the outside. Happy to be convinced otherwise.
I feel we're not addressing the most important point here. What happens to the taxes we pay? Roturn is moving to a bigger house, but at the same time there is still not enough funding to bring the Conglomerate back. Transparency is needed here!
Iirc the Tax System once was implemented to get money out of the system mainly. By going net we again bring money into the system by reducing the money going out.
Which basically changes the whole point of having the tax at all.
So it's not really about pro and cons imo but about if we still want to get money out of the system or not.
Would be interesting as well to see a poll for different division managers as usually the rich are in PT that are impacted the most.
I really dont understand this point since the amount of money extracted from the system depends on the tax rate which we can freely pick. We could just as well go for:
10% for 0-500k profit
20% for 500-1m profit
30% for 1m-2m profit
40% for 2m+ profit
Yes, with the randomly picked tax rates in the opening post, less money would leave the system but with other numbers, this could also increase the money that gets out of the system. (For the protocol: i would aim to get a similar amount as before which means slightly higher tax rates than in the opening post). This really should not be framed as a "do we want more or less money out of the system" but as a "which system do we like more" / "who should pay the taxes"
Pro Net tax: Swap deals are no longer tax benefitial compared to selling for cash and buying a replacement elsewhere. In theory, this should make it easier for teams without a ton of assets (riders) to get deals that they currently might not be able to get since the rich managers might prefer to get the replacement directly in a trade.
Neutral: This also will concentrate the tax burden on less managers. Basically: the managers that want to do big training, will pay more taxes. Everyone else less (or none). I would expect almost all ct manager to pay not a single cent of taxes with the net tax with only a 2024 zwift like team paying a ton. Meanwhile a team like Cedevita (randomly picked the pt team where i remember some transactions) would have a bigger tax hit.
Edited by knockout on 28-09-2025 02:20
My main issue with tax is that it reduces incentiments to an active off season…
If you want to have both money for training and altering your team, you will have to be creative to swap around, instead of just buying riders and Selling others. It makes no sense.
This really should not be framed as a "do we want more or less money out of the system" but as a "which system do we like more" / "who should pay the taxes"
In the context of this decision, those are basically the same questions though. If you want to make the change to net, and you want to get similar amounts of money out of the game as we have now, then who pays those taxes automatically shifts, as you describe. If you want to make the change to net but you don't want to shift the tax burden, you will have less money going out of the game. Unless there are dynamics at play that I'm missing, you can't answer one question without answering the other.
I will say that if we don't take any other actions to balance swaps and sales, I might even be in favor of net taxes. I just would prefer if we tried to find a different way.
Regarding the incentives to an active off season, for one, I think we've had multiple people asking or talking about adding more rows to the transfer sheet because of how many transactions they had made even with this current system. I'm not sure we need even more incentives. And then, yes, with the gross tax system, you might make a couple of transactions less than you would with net, and maybe there is one more spending goal that you can't reach, or only with more sacrifices, that you would achieve with net. But, like, that's kind of the whole point: This is a balancing decision more than anything else, imo. And we can obviously come to different conclusions on that.
This really should not be framed as a "do we want more or less money out of the system" but as a "which system do we like more" / "who should pay the taxes"
In the context of this decision, those are basically the same questions though. If you want to make the change to net, and you want to get similar amounts of money out of the game as we have now, then who pays those taxes automatically shifts, as you describe. If you want to make the change to net but you don't want to shift the tax burden, you will have less money going out of the game. Unless there are dynamics at play that I'm missing, you can't answer one question without answering the other.
Fundamentally "do we want more or less money out of the system?" has fairly little to do with net tax vs gross tax question. Both net and gross tax rates can be changed to fit our wishes. A net tax could easily take more money out of the system if we set it higher. Imo Ulrichs proposal goes for too low tax rates.
Of course, this shifts the balance of who are the teams that spent a lot of tax e.g. SotD probably would have spent a lot more on taxes over the last decade if we had a net tax with tax rates as i would suggest.
The following table has the transfer spending of Evonik and four different tax systems.
Current Gross Tax
0% for 0-500k gross
10% for 500k-1m gross
20% for >1m gross
Ulrichs Progressive Net Tax Proposal
0% for 0-500k profit
15% for 500k-1m profit
25% for >1m profit
Knockout Progressive Net Tax Proposal 10% for 0-500k profit
20% for 500-1m profit
30% for 1m-2m profit
40% for 2m+ profit
33% net tax proposal
33% on profit (no progression)
Year
Gained
Spent
Current
Ulrich
Knockout
33%
2025
3.167.000
100.000
483.400
691.750
926.800
1.012.110
2024
395.000
1.024.000
-
-
-
-
2023
2.113.000
2.625.000
272.600
-
-
-
2022
5.348.000
4.925.000
919.600
-
42.300
139.590
2021
8.540.000
3.854.000
1.558.000
1.096.500
1.574.400
1.546.380
2020
1.725.000
2.745.000
195.000
-
-
-
2019
415.000
2.001.000
-
-
-
-
2018
1.182.000
725.000
86.400
-
45.700
150.810
2017
1.120.000
585.000
74.000
5.250
57.000
176.550
2016
3.090.000
530.000
468.000
565.000
724.000
844.800
2015
1.155.000
2.600.000
81.000
-
-
-
2014
350.000
504.000
-
-
-
-
All
4.138.000
2.358.500
3.370.200
3.870.240
Both my progressive proposal and the 33% options are far closer to current amount of taxes spent than the one by Ulrich and both seem okay to me as possible tax rates. Yes, the current rate is still slightly higher but thats mostly down to 2022 being an absolute outlier with buying Lecuinier for cash mostly. This is only one team with an approach that is not always standard but:
I hope this table shows that the assumption that net tax leads to much smaller amounts of tax money going out of the system is not automatically correct.
So please don't make this is a vote whether we want to get less money out of the system. Make it a vote about the pros and cons of net and gross tax and if net tax is more popular, dive into the data of the past and look what sort of tax rates fit us.
I've spoken about this a lot before in other threads and discord.
Tax is about getting money out of the system. Without Tax the only was cash leaves the system is Training (Wildcards get ignored for being only PCT relevant and really really cheap, and Fines get ignored because they play a different role in things).
This is not in itself a problem, except training is massively weighted towards the PT, and drops off massively as you get into the lower end of the PCT and CT. Money just flows upwards and collects in the top echelons.
Why? Yes PT teams have more saleable assets, so will generate more income. That is not an issue. The issue is that CT teams don't have enough ability to engage with a major part of the game.
I have trained as a CT team in recent years, but that's because of my hyperfocus. If i was any other manager (and i was in the past) i know that the best way to spend my limited budgets is transfers over training. A really meaningful training to your chances in CT is outside of budget.
So we could leave taxes alone, lower them, abolish them even. IF there were more ways to exit cash from the system that ALL managers could use.
Increase WildCard costs! Make training scalable by division! Add CT>HC Wildcards at cost? Increase the ability to roll over remaining budget year-to-year!!
Give managers more ways to use money. That gets more money out the system. Gives managers more things to do, especially for CT managers!!!
This would solve the pooling of cash at the top end. Diversify training spend. Be more fun. And could just replace taxes, where money goes goes up in flames where we could be doing SOMETHING with it.
It's not just a "Which tax system should we use". That misses the point of why Tax exists. "Is tax working, and can we improve how money is used" is the actual question.
Is tax working, yes i think it's working fine and exactly as intended. But we could improve the game significantly
_______
Thank you to those that provided legit numbers. I think UU shows that the tax system is working as intended. I think Knockout shows it could be tweaked (although i'd leave the 0-500k tax rate at 0% so as not to penalise CT teams that will almost entirely fall in this range and who already don't have money, see above), and his numbers are a bit better to achieve what we want by upping the rate of Net Tax.
My choice of the relatively mild increase wasn't completely random although nor was it deeply though out.
My concern with systems that go to net and try to keep the money in the game constant is they become very punitive to team trying to do a lot of training. Because talents are now all capped to max in the 78-81 range (which controls inflation) training is important to differentiating at those top levels, which is desirable I think. And since the benefits of net vs gross are pretty distributed, since much of it accrues to net buyers, who aren't trying to train, I am not sure the extra money is going to radically impact anything.
I agree with TMM that if there is a problem with training it is not that there is too much of it but that it is only feasible in PT. But increasing the tax rates doesn't solve that. That needs a different solution.
I am a fan of the argument that net evens the playing field between teams who only have money (new teams, promoted teams) and team who have money and talent to trade (primarily PT and established PCT).
In my opinion the fact that the current transfer tax system can easily be abused with three-way deals and unfairly favors one type of deal (swaps over cash) should definitely be reason enough to change to net tax.
Any other issue that gets lumped into the discussion here is, like knockout also pointed out, not the question here. Things like the amount of money leaving the system (even through transfer tax) and a potential training monopoly in PT can also be discussed elsewhere but should not stop us from abolishing a flawed game mechanic.
cunego59 wrote:
Another argument is that gross taxes incentivize and unfairly benefit rider swaps. I agree with this completely, I think it's the best argument for net tax and I think this needs to be addressed. But in my opinion, the better way to go is to tax rider swaps in some way. Ideas have been floated, such as an increase in wages of swapped riders, or taxes based on the wages of the riders involved. It won't be easy to figure out the specifics, but I think the downsides (i.e. more money in the system and more imbalance between top teams and the rest) of going to net taxation outweigh this.
Isn't a net tax exactly what solves the issue as it would also bring swaps into the calculation of the transfer tax? If we want to tax swaps in another way there'd need to be an evaluation of how much value a rider has in a swap and I'd say that's probably impossible to do in a fair way.
Having said that I like UUs suggested tax system with mild increases, as it should not lead to teams that sell a lot having more but should spread the extra cash among all teams quite distributed and I would imagine should mostly impact training of subtop riders which I also don't think would be a bad thing. Anyways, as said that should not influence the discussion here.
Threads are now up to vote on this. Two separate polls, one compares the current system to my proposed limited tax increases the other compares the current system to the more significant tax increase in the progressive system proposed by Knockout.
I did two polls because I think there are different thoughts about how important it is to keep the money even as part of going to a net tax.
For the significant tax increase I used the progressive system suggested by Knockout rather than his flat tax as it is more similar to the current approach. We could potentially play with the tax system once the basic decision is made.
If both "change" votes win we will either go with the one with the more votes or do a run off between them.
As I said originally we aren't setting a precedent of voting on rule changes but in this case I think the admins are likely to follow the community consensus. If the votes are very close we might bias to the current system for simplicity.
Currently it seems like a change of the transfer tax won't get a majority.
The main reason why people seem to be opposed to a change seems to be the fear of less money leaving the system through the tax.
I want to emphasize again that this should not play a role in the decision of gross vs net tax. If desired, the money in the system after can be of similar quantity even with a net tax. It might take some other actions to guarantee this, which could be discussed subsequently.
In my opinion the current transfer tax is very flawed and should definitely be changed. So, I am a bit surprised about how many seem to be in favour of it. I asked about it on discord before, but TMM rightly mentioned, that the discussion belongs here.
I hope someone can explain to me why we would want to financially incentivize swaps over cash deals like we're currently doing with the tax. I don't think that was the original motivation when the tax was created but just an oversight.
I'll try to highlight why I think the current tax is not helping the game with two examples.
Example A
2 teams want to sell their team leader that could be sold for 2m in cash each and reinvest their earnings into replacement rider(s).
Current Tax:
Option 1: Each team sells their rider for 2m and pays 400k transfer tax (20%). That leaves them with 1.6m each to buy other riders.
Option 2: The two teams decide to swap their 2m riders. None of the teams pays transfer tax. Opposed to option 1 they were able to acquire riders riders worth 400k more than in option 1. The two teams between them could retain 800k cash more than if they had done another deal of the same value.
Net Tax:
Option 1 and Option 2 have the same effect on the transfer tax paid.
Example B
Team A wants to sell their Rider X to Team B for 2m. They want to replace them with Rider Y of Team C - worth 1.5m.
Current Tax:
Option 1: Rider X and Rider Y change team as part of cash deals, leading to Team A paying 400k in transfer tax and Team C 300k (20%).
Option 2: Team A asks Team B to buy Rider Y of Team C for 1.5m. Afterwards they swap the riders and Team B pays 500k to Team A. Instead of 400k, Team A only pays 100k of transfer tax. For the other teams nothing changes compared to option 1. By gaming the transfer tax system Team A saved 300k.
Net Tax:
Option 1 and Option 2 have the same effect on the transfer tax paid.
Anyone arguing for no change of the tax system please tell me why it should be benificiary to the game to incentivize swap deals so much over cash deals like in my examples. And please dont do so by referring to the money leaving the system through the tax. That can be changed. The motivation behind introducing the transfer tax in the first place was to combat stat inflation and make top end training harder to achieve. Teams that use transfers to gain training funds will still pay taxes with a net tax (and it could even be more, if desired).
Edited by Bikex on 13-10-2025 19:03
Give managers more ways to use money. That gets more money out the system. Gives managers more things to do, especially for CT managers!!!
This would solve the pooling of cash at the top end. Diversify training spend. Be more fun. And could just replace taxes, where money goes goes up in flames where we could be doing SOMETHING with it.
Currently it seems like a change of the transfer tax won't get a majority.
The main reason why people seem to be opposed to a change seems to be the fear of less money leaving the system through the tax.
I want to emphasize again that this should not play a role in the decision of gross vs net tax. If desired, the money in the system after can be of similar quantity even with a net tax. It might take some other actions to guarantee this, which could be discussed subsequently.
In my opinion the current transfer tax is very flawed and should definitely be changed. So, I am a bit surprised about how many seem to be in favour of it. I asked about it on discord before, but TMM rightly mentioned, that the discussion belongs here.
I hope someone can explain to me why we would want to financially incentivize swaps over cash deals like we're currently doing with the tax. I don't think that was the original motivation when the tax was created but just an oversight.
I'll try to highlight why I think the current tax is not helping the game with two examples.
Example A
2 teams want to sell their team leader that could be sold for 2m in cash each and reinvest their earnings into replacement rider(s).
Current Tax:
Option 1: Each team sells their rider for 2m and pays 400k transfer tax (20%). That leaves them with 1.6m each to buy other riders.
Option 2: The two teams decide to swap their 2m riders. None of the teams pays transfer tax. Opposed to option 1 they were able to acquire riders riders worth 400k more than in option 1. The two teams between them could retain 800k cash more than if they had done another deal of the same value.
Net Tax:
Option 1 and Option 2 have the same effect on the transfer tax paid.
Example B
Team A wants to sell their Rider X to Team B for 2m. They want to replace them with Rider Y of Team C - worth 1.5m.
Current Tax:
Option 1: Rider X and Rider Y change team as part of cash deals, leading to Team A paying 400k in transfer tax and Team C 300k (20%).
Option 2: Team A asks Team B to buy Rider Y of Team C for 1.5m. Afterwards they swap the riders and Team B pays 500k to Team A. Instead of 400k, Team A only pays 100k of transfer tax. For the other teams nothing changes compared to option 1. By gaming the transfer tax system Team A saved 300k.
Net Tax:
Option 1 and Option 2 have the same effect on the transfer tax paid.
Anyone arguing for no change of the tax system please tell me why it should be benificiary to the game to incentivize swap deals so much over cash deals like in my examples. And please dont do so by referring to the money leaving the system through the tax. That can be changed. The motivation behind introducing the transfer tax in the first place was to combat stat inflation and make top end training harder to achieve. Teams that use transfers to gain training funds will still pay taxes with a net tax (and it could even be more, if desired).
Totally agree with everything you’ve said. If we really are just going to vote to keep the current tax system, for the love of god can everybody please stop complaining about 50% of deals being swaps - this is the opportunity to change that. And not with some arbitrary ‘swap tax’ that’s been floated that will just over complicate things further and massively take away from the enjoyment of transfers.
Like Bikex said, the gross tax system was brought in a long time ago to address issues the game had 10+ years ago - it’s no longer relevant and needs updating.
Example A
2 teams want to sell their team leader that could be sold for 2m in cash each and reinvest their earnings into replacement rider(s).
Current Tax:
Option 1: Each team sells their rider for 2m and pays 400k transfer tax (20%). That leaves them with 1.6m each to buy other riders.
Option 2: The two teams decide to swap their 2m riders. None of the teams pays transfer tax. Opposed to option 1 they were able to acquire riders riders worth 400k more than in option 1. The two teams between them could retain 800k cash more than if they had done another deal of the same value.
Net Tax:
Option 1 and Option 2 have the same effect on the transfer tax paid.
Hi, i said i'd come and give you some long form answer
This is exactly how Swaps are supposed to work, i don't see how this is a "flaw". Team 1 has a rider Team 2 wants, and visa versa. The riders are, to those teams, of equivalent value.
In this instance a Swap is the exact right move for both teams AND for the game as a whole. Tax is irrelevant here, we want these two teams to opt for a swap and hold onto their cash to use for other things. This is even more true if the teams are in two different divisions, and a PCT or CT team is able to keep more of their own cash.
This is perfect! There is no tax involved, there should be no tax involved!
I would never advocate to force these teams to do two different cash deals, specifically to generate taxes. In this case there would be no problem of one directional cash flow and resources pooling upwards, so no need to tax. We want more deals like this imo.
Example B
Team A wants to sell their Rider X to Team B for 2m. They want to replace them with Rider Y of Team C - worth 1.5m.
Current Tax:
Option 1: Rider X and Rider Y change team as part of cash deals, leading to Team A paying 400k in transfer tax and Team C 300k (20%).
Option 2: Team A asks Team B to buy Rider Y of Team C for 1.5m. Afterwards they swap the riders and Team B pays 500k to Team A. Instead of 400k, Team A only pays 100k of transfer tax. For the other teams nothing changes compared to option 1. By gaming the transfer tax system Team A saved 300k.
Net Tax:
Option 1 and Option 2 have the same effect on the transfer tax paid.
We do all know three way deals go on, like this to benefit the teams by either making sure riders end up on "preferred" teams or to dodge tax.
It's that slightly grey rules area... we've all been there and all will go there again.
It's not really relevant to Gross vs Net tax. It's more an issue of, is this three way dealing against the rules? The answer is, sort of yes but we're never going to stop it either.
I'm also not really against teams working around the tax system. It's fake money in a cycling fantasy game, who cares if we're making the maximum amount of tax to the MGUCI - who can't do anything with it anyway.
Anyone arguing for no change of the tax system please tell me why it should be benificiary to the game to incentivize swap deals so much over cash deals like in my examples. And please dont do so by referring to the money leaving the system through the tax. That can be changed. The motivation behind introducing the transfer tax in the first place was to combat stat inflation and make top end training harder to achieve. Teams that use transfers to gain training funds will still pay taxes with a net tax (and it could even be more, if desired).
It was already better to do swaps than cash, because of the changes to Overbidding to prevent pre-agrements. It's still better to do swaps for this reason. I'm not arguing against that.
From a personal point, I'd almost always rather do a Swap over Cash, unless I specifically want to build training funds.
What I don't get from your above is how Swaps or Cash impacts whether Tax should be Gross or Net? Swaps eliminate the need for cash, and the need for tax. So whether Tax is Net or Gross is meaningless to a Rider Swap deal.
I'd prefer a Tax on Gross over Net, as it restricts teams ability to work around Taxes by balancing Cash deals. It therefore provides more of a way to exit money from the system. If you want to go over why we need a way to exit money from the system i'll go into a lot of talk on that - i think it's massively important and should be the actual point of discussion rather than Net vs Gross (we need more ways to use cash to make being a manager more fun and challenging and unique!).
I also don't want to use Tax as a restriction on Training. I've always said, and maintain, training should never be included in Inflation conversations. Separate discussions again whether the training restrictions are still needed, and how we can improve training (make it division scalable, make it easier/more worthwhile to train secondary stats etc etc). I want Tax to exist so that the money system is not so heavily funneled upwards, and to i guess add an extra decision element to transfers.
Hopefully that in some way helps a little bit, but I guess i see your concerns about Swaps vs Cash as being somewhat separate to Net vs Gross or even the question of Tax at all.
Example A
2 teams want to sell their team leader that could be sold for 2m in cash each and reinvest their earnings into replacement rider(s).
Current Tax:
Option 1: Each team sells their rider for 2m and pays 400k transfer tax (20%). That leaves them with 1.6m each to buy other riders.
Option 2: The two teams decide to swap their 2m riders. None of the teams pays transfer tax. Opposed to option 1 they were able to acquire riders riders worth 400k more than in option 1. The two teams between them could retain 800k cash more than if they had done another deal of the same value.
Net Tax:
Option 1 and Option 2 have the same effect on the transfer tax paid.
Hi, i said i'd come and give you some long form answer
This is exactly how Swaps are supposed to work, i don't see how this is a "flaw". Team 1 has a rider Team 2 wants, and visa versa. The riders are, to those teams, of equivalent value.
In this instance a Swap is the exact right move for both teams AND for the game as a whole. Tax is irrelevant here, we want these two teams to opt for a swap and hold onto their cash to use for other things.
It is a flaw because it is adding an artificial incentive to do swap deals over cash deals. Nobody would argue you should get a tax break for selling a mountain rider over a sprinter, why would you get a tax break for doing a swap deal over a cash deal? As you point out below swap deals are better because of the overbid protection, why do we need to add a tax benefit on top of that?
TheManxMissile wrote:
It's not really relevant to Gross vs Net tax. It's more an issue of, is this three way dealing against the rules? The answer is, sort of yes but we're never going to stop it either.
It is entirely relevant to the Net vs Gross tax, with a net tax there would be no tax advantage to do a dodgy swap deal. That is the whole point. Why wouldn't we eliminate something that, as you note, encourages "dodgy" deals. And given the complexity and level of trust required in 3-way deals they also play to the advantage of established managers.
Hopefully that in some way helps a little bit, but I guess i see your concerns about Swaps vs Cash as being somewhat separate to Net vs Gross or even the question of Tax at all.
In my opinion it's not separate at all it is the essence of what we're discussing. The net tax would solve the issue of the current tax system that incentivizes swaps over cash deals. With the net tax any rider changing teams would become part of the calculation as both sides of any deal would be considered in the tax calculation.
In this instance a Swap is the exact right move for both teams AND for the game as a whole. Tax is irrelevant here, we want these two teams to opt for a swap and hold onto their cash to use for other things. This is even more true if the teams are in two different divisions, and a PCT or CT team is able to keep more of their own cash.
This is perfect! There is no tax involved, there should be no tax involved!
I would never advocate to force these teams to do two different cash deals, specifically to generate taxes. In this case there would be no problem of one directional cash flow and resources pooling upwards, so no need to tax. We want more deals like this imo.
Is it like that do we want teams to hold on to their money and mainly do swap deals? If so, it's the first time I hear it and my next question would be why? Why do we want a team to do a rider swap rather than let's say sell a rider for cash and use that cash to acquire another rider from a third team?
I don't want to force teams to do cash deals or in general do deals in a certain way I just don't think we should additionally incentivize swaps like we're currently doing with the transfer tax.
My example was supposed to show how much difference the current tax system actually makes and put some numbers to it. If the two teams in the example want to do a swap they should be free to do so, but in my opinion they should also be free to sell their rider and use the cash on different riders and not be punished by the system if they chose that option, which currently is the case.
We do all know three way deals go on, like this to benefit the teams by either making sure riders end up on "preferred" teams or to dodge tax.
It's that slightly grey rules area... we've all been there and all will go there again.
It's not really relevant to Gross vs Net tax. It's more an issue of, is this three way dealing against the rules? The answer is, sort of yes but we're never going to stop it either.
Should we really just accept there being grey areas in deals when we could easily prevent them with the net tax? Please look at my example again with a net tax there is no need to do such a dodgy deal anymore, thus making them pointless and leveling the playing field.
What I don't get from your above is how Swaps or Cash impacts whether Tax should be Gross or Net? Swaps eliminate the need for cash, and the need for tax. So whether Tax is Net or Gross is meaningless to a Rider Swap deal.
It's not about the tax just in a swap deal. You're of course right in that case it doesn't matter if it's gross or net. The difference though is the comparison to the alternative. With a net tax it doesn't matter if I do a rider swap or if I sell a rider for his value and reinvest the money into another transfer. With the gross tax I have a huge tax benefit when doing the swap. I don't think that tax benefit is beneficial to the game and if it is desired then please tell me why?
I'd prefer a Tax on Gross over Net, as it restricts teams ability to work around Taxes by balancing Cash deals.
I think my example proved the opposite, but feel free to elaborate on how it would be possible to work around net taxes.
It therefore provides more of a way to exit money from the system. If you want to go over why we need a way to exit money from the system i'll go into a lot of talk on that - i think it's massively important and should be the actual point of discussion rather than Net vs Gross (we need more ways to use cash to make being a manager more fun and challenging and unique!).
I also don't want to use Tax as a restriction on Training. I've always said, and maintain, training should never be included in Inflation conversations. Separate discussions again whether the training restrictions are still needed, and how we can improve training (make it division scalable, make it easier/more worthwhile to train secondary stats etc etc). I want Tax to exist so that the money system is not so heavily funneled upwards, and to i guess add an extra decision element to transfers.
I agree with everything you said in this paragraph but think it would best be discussed elsewhere, as it is not what this thread is about.
Especially the concern of how much money is leaving the system was brought up a few time in this thread and is definitely something that should not be a factor when deciding about gross vs net. With either tax system that amount can be altered. I unfortunately feel like doubts about this influenced some opinions here.
