Quote Originally Posted by Madae View Post
I'm looking at it from 500 as the base, and the 20% is added on to it. 20% = 100 (600), 40% = 200 (700). The tax is going to you, not to someone else. You're assuming someone is taxing you, when in reality you're taxing them from whatever the base value is + the tax bonus.

This is easily solved if you just load up a game, take note of what a province makes, build something, and then see what the total amount would be after it's completed.

Or maybe you're agreeing with me and I'm just confused. Now that I look at it, I think that's the case. The way you worded it was confusing.
No, the way it works is that if the tax rate is 20%, you're only receiving 20% of the 500 wealth. 500 is what is added to the economy. What you tax is what you get as income. I believe 30% is the base and the % from towns and from geishas are added in, which makes them pretty potent.

Let's say you have enough provinces that your administrative expense is 25%. If you're upgrading a gold mine from 800 to 1400 wealth, you're getting an extra 600*(30% tax rate*(1-25% administrative expense)) = 135 in tax income every turn.

Now imagine that town with the 800 wealth gold mine also has meagre soil (1.3 multiplier) tenant fields (900 wealth), an inn (360 wealth) and 70 in town wealth. The total economy would be 800 + 1.3*900 + 360 + 70 = 2400 and the tax income would be 2400*(30%(1-25%)) = 540 per turn.

Upgrading that to a large town would change it to 2400*(32*(1-25%)) = 576 per turn. The extra 36 is clearly inferior to the 135 from upgrading the gold mine, even after taking into account that the large town upgrade is around half the price. Of course, the more you upgrade the inn, farms and mine, the better the large town upgrade becomes.