It seems Nieyli just doesn't like bottom up income. Nieyli, have you been to nullsec and been a part of the coalitions? Have you run a group that covers expenses and done the day to day activites of managing a corp, corp assets and the like? Do you have any understanding of these areas of the game by personal experiance?
If you haven't, and I'm beginning to suspect you haven't, then you're talking from a platform of ignorance. As someone who does live in nullsec, bottom up isn't scary nor undesireable. As someone who has run several layers of expenses to keep a wormhole corp running and sustainable, bottom up would be a god damn blessing.
You seem to just not want people to take your space money in a space game, and that's fine you can go ahead and enjoy sitting in your one person tax haven, that option is not going away. The option of the LP tax is one that's not going to affect you since you're not taxing yourself. Further bottom up income options won't hurt players since corps will have to encourage people to make money, take on people who just want to rat and all that good stuff.
Either way, nothing new or constructive is being brought to this thread at this point, we're all running around in circles.
It's not that I don't like bottom-up income. I just don't like throwing money into a hole. Why? Because time is money. Doubly so for EVE, which is a hobby. So if I'm going to be in a corporation so I can get taxed so I can be in a corporation so I can get so I can... You get the idea.
And yes, I have been in a nullsec bloc. Our corp had expenses, but we had money moons to offset that. We did other tings too, but that's the most common example. It's an easy income stream that can be managed by just a few people to cover expenses. It's also a direct benefit of being able to exert power over an area of space and claim the moons.
Another thing that nullsec has is outposts. Those do fun things such as halving research time, giving you better refine yield, lowering construction materials required, etc. They're strategic assets as well, but the income generated by them comes from alliance members using the relevant services. It really is the best of both worlds, because it requires active interaction for income to occur and it requires the ability to exert force for it to be there in the first place.
The problem with those is that lowsec and wormholes don't have outposts. With the advent of citadels, however, the aforementioned services will get normalised across all areas of space. The effect in wormholes is going to be enormous, since you'd no longer need to fuel dozens of towers if you're in a larger corporation. Everyone would be able to safely share a single citadel. Broker fees, clones installation costs and all the other little things people do would get funneled towards the corp that owns the citadel. That is, if you can keep it alive.
So far, so good. But where does the LP tax fit within this model? Short answer: it does not.
Long answer: Rather than it being inherently tied to a service, it's a flat income tax. I'm glad that you mentioned wormhole funding models, because one of the methods they use is a loot buyback programme. You drop off your sleeper loot or relic site loot or what have you in a hangar, and after a while you receive let's say 90% of its value. Hold up, what? Isn't that an income tax? And the answer is no. No, because that way the corp member saves on time. He doesn't have to haul billions of sleeper loot and sell it. He's paying you to do it. He doesn't have to train up market skills to make the most of it. He's paying you to do it. Similarly, instead of having a flat LP tax in your corp, tell your members that you're going to be buying items A, B and C in station H for X ISK. Provide them with the items needed for conversion and pay out 90% of the final value of the items you get. That way your members don't have to worry about hauling, figuring out which items to buy, market, etc. Because they're paying you to do it.
It would still be possible for them to do it themselves entirely for higher payout, but a lot less people would go out of their way to circumvent something that ends up saving them time and hassle.
And that's the whole problem that taxing your members as a form of bottom-up income presents: It takes them time to do it. If someone spends real money on a plex to fund his pvp and logs in for an hour here and there, are you going to encourage him to spend time on grinding something so you can tax him? Offer him some services that he can spend some of the plex isk on and everyone is happy. Yes, I know, limited example, but it keeps true at all levels to a degree.
Conversely, taking on people for the sole purpose of taxing them means that you're taking on renters in your corp's membership. Now, considering that the main scope of the LP tax (correct me if I'm wrong) is FW, what kind of FW farmer is going to join a corp to be a renter?
I am going to assume your good intentions here and politely request a source or compelling argument to the truth of this fact. I appreciate you feel strongly on this issue, but let us deal with the facts here.
I appreciate your point of view and wish to see if I can come to incorporate it within my own.
Preview of a drilling platform at FanfestInterview with CCP Nullarbor about moon mining and relevant topics.
