Though we understood the tax burden before we took on this challenge and we will struggle to meet it, it is unfortunate that there is not some sort of Tax discount of Themed land.
I believe themed land will bring a lot to SL and will be an important way to show new users what is great about SL. When i first joined i was so lost in the massive jungle of randomness that I almost let SL go away without really trying it. But then I went to an event in Darkwood and the Theme amazed me.
I think themed communities will be great at convincing new players that SL is great and worth the money.
The problem with the way you have set up these new themed groups is this. We want the whole sim and the only way to do this is to buy 1/2 now and 1/2 in a month. total this is 196,000, also we will need about 34,000 a week in taxes. This is an extraordinary amount of money... but wait, oh yes we must also spend massive amounts of money to build and make these sims look good, which wait will then be taxed as well.
I think that many themed communities will fail under this system because we need to have nice stuff built in order to pay for the land.
This is my proposal for themed sims now. Suspend all taxes until the second half of the Sims are released at least, would rather wait till a certain percentage of the sims are built up.
After taxes are turned on make them a reduced rate as these sims are adding much more to SL than randomly built sims.
For all future themed sims i think they would be better to be just awarded to a group... make all land linden land and as the group wishes to buy 1/16 sections or whatever release them.. That way the group can develop each section and have it ready to go before purchasing the rest........
The way it is set up now the groups must support taxes on an empty sim as they build up each section... which is entirely unreasonable.
JV