Stronghold and taxes

[Kershek]

I have a group that recently took over a certain bookstore in Brindinford from Speaker in Dreams. They asked for it as payment for saving the town and got it from the Baron.

After looking through all the rooms and comparing it with the Stronghold Builder's Guide, I came up with 14,430 gp as the building's worth.

They probably won't open it up as a store - instead, they want to use it as a base of operations. How much do you think the Baron should charge them per month for taxes?

 

[Ranger REG]

Did the previous owner own the bookstore or rent it from the baron?

 

[Kershek]

They owned it. Though I would think that they would have to pay property taxes to be there.

 

[Kershek]

Bump - still looking for some suggestions on taxation.

 

[jgbrowning]

Bump - still looking for some suggestions on taxation.

Well, need more information. What type of city is it? Are taxes guild based, based upon fiscal records, land taxes, trading taxes?
I take it the Baron either owns the city or owned the particular building.


gah... .i could go on and on.....

hrm...

use rule 0! 10% a year!

10%!


joe b.

 

[Tonguez]

10 - 20% of GV = 1400 - 2800gp per annum

 

[Oni]

These are pretty vast sums of money for shop keepers to be dealing in, the previous owners must have had some kind of business.

 

[Kershek]

Well, I didn't want to spoil people who don't want to be given information about the module.

The town is a large town of almost 5,000 people. We can assume the previous inhabitants owned the building. They had a small booksellers shop front and the building is 3 levels high with a basement, for a total of 7 stronghold spaces. We should also assume the baron charges property tax of some sort.

 

[S'mon]

Realistically (for a medieval world) the tax would most likely be levied annually, and be based on the square footage of land occupied by the building rather than an assessment of its sale value. But if you want to use a real-world approach, well, 1% of building sale value per year is probably about right, up to 5% if taxes are heavy/building values are low.
Anything much more starts to go into 'screw PCs for the sake of it' territory.

 

[Kershek]

I'm not trying to screw the PCs out of money, but I am trying to assess some sort of collection for coming into the ownership of a rather nice building in a good part of town that must have some value to be taxed by the local government for them to operate.