Tax day messed up yet again??????????

I 100% agree hunny, and not only cause ur my hunny .. lol

While I was not hit AS hard with this pericular instance my group is currently devistated with its effects and the current state of affairs.

I wont go into how I thought the tax/strippend system used to work, I've pried what info I could out of other poeple and it was working just fine for me up until the other night. I did not get the money I should have (if I understand the system correctly). But this is only a side factor for my group right now.

I had hoped to use the money to bolster those members who didn't have enough to buy their 16x16 plot of land so that we could secure the sim and eventualy begin our project. The problem is the more I look at the current tax situation (espeicaly with many of us running into this seaminly new issue) the more I realize that the group simes, as designed, are doomed to entrophy.

Their is no way, with the way taxes sare suddenly working, that anyone without regular income from sales of objects, a very high ratting and lots of booth votes is going to be able to maintain the plots of land the lindens asked us to buy in. The new rules set specificly requests us to buy in plots of 16x16 (64x64meters). Before, as I understood it, the system took care of itself and one's life could continue after a heavy land purchase or large build (mine did after the angel, who cost upwards of 2k). Now its a No go.

As it is Little Tokyo is lucky, we have been heming and hawing on what were gona do and how were going to do it so nothing permenant has been started. Our neighbors to the north, the Starwars group in Rose jumped into their project with both feet and took off running. I was peaking over the hill every so often seeing towers rise and fall, AT-ST's forming etc.... I have come to learn that due to these taxation issues their whole team (save 3 members) went broke or nearly so and all (save those 3 members) have left, some qutting SL all together.

I understand the situation is not good in Americana, Nexus or the other projects either. Their is just now way to support the land AND build on it unless your already finanicaly in the upper 50 and even then based on what I am seeing tax day is going to hit them like a bucket of icewater.

If something is not done, all of the wonderfuly pland works of all the communities are going to go rigth into dumpster with a big stamp on them that says [Not Finanicaly Possible]. The sims will revert to standard issue housing, thow possibly with clusters of people with a similar interest near one another... thow many may return to their old homes (if they didnt sell them specificly for this project) and pretend it never happend.

The system (as I understood it) was to control the flow of objects into SL. This makes sence, they need time to react to the growing world. However LAND is the most hevily taxed resource available to us and due to this the most negative part of our world (aside from the root which would be taxes going bad right now).

When somone buys a large chunk of land, their is a high probability that there are going to be less resources used in that much space than would normaly be if say 4-8 people bought equal shares of that land all building their own stuff on it (Skeeds would be an obvious exception that prooves the rule here being so active).

If my theory on Bis space + few people = Less prims on average, why are we making land the hardest thing to buy and maintain? I created a giant angel, it was somewhere upwards of 80+ prims, many at max size. I didnt have to buy hardly any land beneath it to keep it safely owend (thow I did miss a square somewhere and his belt/skirt went public on me). That was in my first few days here. Larg amounts of space dont have any affect on peoples ability to bring in prims.

Thank you, yes.

Let's look at some numbers, shall we? <g>

1 16th of a sim. To keep things really easy for me, since math is not my friend, let's say the purchase price is $12,000 and the weekly taxes are $2000 (both of these numbers are slightly on the low side, but again, they'll be easier for me).

Or $12,000 worth of prims -- assume a default cube, default size, set on the ground:

1200 cubes -- $1200 tax per week. Gee, that's so much less than the $2000 per week land tax, let's make some of those cubes all lights as well, cuz we can afford it!

Now let's drop some scripts into those cubes! That doesn't cost us a penny <G>.

Which of the above scenarios is going to use more server resources?

#!

Just a note about sim-crashes, rollbacks, and lost $.

A rollback (of a simulator to an earlier time) was our temporary solution to the problem where some content was made that would pull the simulator to its knees, and would continue to kill the simulator on restart. Rollbacks were usuall less than an hour back and would cause the most recent content to vanish and some recently deleted content to reappear.

Some fixes have been in for at least a week that rescue a simulator from intractible content on restart. This essentially eliminates our need for rollbacks and does not cause $ to be lost. Haney could correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there has been a crash-related rollback since this fix has been implemented.

Finally, a sim crash can currently cause some pending $ refunds/deductions (non-tax related transactions) to be lost. These would be transactions that are are only a few seconds old. Phoenix Linden has already fixed this problem in our development codebase and it will be included in the next release.

Thx Andrew, that sets my mind at ease at least
next to tackle is land tax

Philip says :



Partial finance? Where? What did we miss?

We came up with 18k to buy the land under the build. We pay the taxes on it. We pay the taxes on our builds. The height taxes penalize us for the very design that makes the build distinctive....And we did it ourrr waaaayy!

Just not quite sure what's meant by "partial financing". Are the buffer zones considered financing? Or did Haney pocket it the money. SL's first misapproriation of Linden dollars scandal!

Well you guys have problem with taxes and land being to expensive.

My problem is even worse...I didnt get my stipend money..aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh..

Why, where is it. What should I eat if i dont get my stipend....please I need help.

I lead the DarkWood theme.

Bel is correct, the only benefit of the original themed communities is the buffer provided by the lindens. We are not funded or subsidised in any way.

My current land taxes are $5,881. Where is that land?

1 square in Boardman Bazaar - $9 tax
My Arcade in Taber - $1409 tax
The rest is in DarkWood - $4,463 a week.

I get no help for this, no subsidation and about half of it isn't even attached to the grid which means I can't even get votes for it.

I have three voting booths and average maybe $100 a night in votes give or take. That is $700 a week. My stipend + bonus hovers around $3000 - $4000 depending on how much time I hang around the newbie area. What does this mean? It means I don't get enough stipend + bonus to cover just the land I own in DarkWood, let alone my personal projects.

And as for taxes on land vs objects being inline.... maybe I am not the norm but my object taxes are around $1800 (remember my land taxes are $5800) and I own the Arcade, the DarkWood Church, 2 houses in DarkWood Village, the streets, trees and streetlights of DarkWood, the furnishings of the DarkWood Inn, the Tomes and more. I don't consider my self short on objects in world yet I pay about a quarter the taxes for objects as I do for land.

The Lindens are using the themes as a drawing point - bring the people on the trial into the midst of the themes so they see how good they are and join SL. This makes them money, as opposed to dropping new people off in natoma or something. At the very least taxes on these sims should be lower.