D&D 5E Taxes, and the people who have to pay them.

[The Crimson Binome]

Even a strong man must sleep some time.

And if the group takes turns sleeping, it won't be very mobile.

High-level adventurers can create new realms of existence in which to sleep, and mobility is not a problem since their primary goal is to stop the wicked government from oppressing them personally. If an evil soldier shows up, or evil-aligned peasants, you just kill them in the appropriate fashion as you slowly make your way toward the king in charge.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

So an odd thing happened while reading through the discussion thread about the prices on slaves in the Underdark. What about taxes?

**snip**

I even thought an interesting and funny hook for an adventure or campaign could be the tax collectors laying down the business on the player(s) to recover back-taxes on all their unclaimed dungeon loot.

My question then is this. Has anyone made any sort of system or rules or even had thoughts about this besides me? Should I just put on my comfiest straight-jacket and calm down?

To the first part...taxes and how they affect (or not) PC's are based mostly upon the campaign world/setting. In my World of Eisla, "adventurers" aren't really a thing, mainly because monsters and what-have-you are waaaaay down deep or far away from towns/cities. An "adventurer" in Eisla is someone who decides that being an outrunner for a merchant caravan is something they want to do with their life. "Normal" folk don't do that kinda silly thing...there's brigands, thieves, hywaymen and bandits on the long roads between towns!

In my other campaign setting of choice, Greyhawk, taxes are levied upon those who reside in an actual abode (cottage, farm, house, mansion, keep, apartment, long-term rented room at the inn, etc). Adventurers don't usually have such targets...so they don't get taxed, most of the time. There is a fee for entering most settlements with a wall, and some for leaving! This tax is usually based on what it looks like the person can pay, or a flat rate based on profession.

A new (to me) campaign setting I've started to DM 5e in is Aereth (the world for all the 3.x "DCC Modules" from Goodman Games way back when). To me, it looks like taxes are based mainly on the country in question. Some seem rather "Arthurian legand'ish", some "Conan'ish", some "thieves world'ish", and many in-between.

Now, as to the second part of your OP...taxes on PC's are dependent almost entirely upon the PLAYERS buy-in to the idea. I saw more than one party go from "decent folk, if a bit expensive to hire", to "nothing but a cut-throat band of black-blooded mercenaries!" in the blink of an eye. When a party of 6 characters, say, 7th level, are told to pay 10% of the value of all the coins, gems, and jewelry they are brining into the city say "Er...how about....no? We'll give you 1gp for each of us, much like you just charged those four travelers before us. Or, you could try and take it from us... Blood-Drinker over there hasn't killed anything this morning...start with him. He's the 7' talk half-orc in the demonic bone-plate armour over there...". Well....er...'nuff said, really. Unless I wanted to start DM'ing a group of criminal PC's, I had to err on the side of caution. I figured this is what the nobles, leaders, etc would probably come to realize as well. When a group of a half-dozen 'people' can lay waste to your entire town...you probably want to keep them on your good side. Besides...adventurers like to spend money. Boosts the economy. With overly harsh "taxes", they'll just start going elsewhere...and when word gets out, and the mayor suddenly finds himself unable to hire any group of adventurers to take care of a slowly approaching goblin hoard, well, too bad. Maybe he should have though about just letting those guys pay 1gp each in stead of trying to milk them for all they had...

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Derren]

Does someone know if and how mercenaries were taxed in the middle ages?
I assume that for people without a fixed home most taxes would be levied as tolls. "So you want to get inside the city? Thats 2 gold per person and 1 out of 100 coins you got from adventuring"

 

[Dan Chernozub]

Well, I'm running a homebrew campaign right now that has a "civilization reborn claims the wild lands around it" as one of the themes. Adventuring parties are common and most of the power is wielded by active/former adventurers (meritocracy of a kind). Adventuring taxes are mostly worked into the prices of weapons/armor/adventuring goods. It is easier to tax a merchant than an adventurer. Based at the "frontier" characters often overpay 1.5-2 times for even mundane items. Magic items are rarely sold and most of the economy is silver-based. Works fine so far. It might get out of hand with accumaltion of wealth into the later levels.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Does someone know if and how mercenaries were taxed in the middle ages?
I assume that for people without a fixed home most taxes would be levied as tolls. "So you want to get inside the city? Thats 2 gold per person and 1 out of 100 coins you got from adventuring"

You didn't tax mercenaries. You paid them. Otherwise bad things happened. Lol

Sent from my SM-G900P using EN World mobile app

 

[Istbor]

I have noticed something interesting from reading through these posts. Aside from helpful suggestions and interesting anecdotes of course.

It's that negative connotation with taxes. A lot of people think, "Taxes!? There must be a corrupt government official around!". I see that reflected in some of the comments here.

Not saying it is bad or good. Just... interesting. I admit, if I hadn't made the original post, I would probably make that same connection. I think it says something interesting about us that taxes are so universally disliked.

I think ultimately, I may do some taxes in the form of property, if it should ever be owned (some of my players I could see buying land or buildings/businesses). I also like the tax for traveling or entering a protected city.

 

[clearstream]

So an odd thing happened while reading through the discussion thread about the prices on slaves in the Underdark. What about taxes?

My player's characters are all citizens of an established empire. Presumably, taxes are levied against said citizens.

Why does this matter you ask? Well for a few reasons actually. I like my world to be believable and appear to be a functioning place. Travel time in this quite large empire take a long time, and I am hoping that my players will want to explore the different regions and take advantage of 'off time' activities and goals. All told, this could mean years pass in game time, so a citizen would experience all the things that should happen in that time frame in this place. Adventurers have a lot of wealth. I mean... a lot. How would a functioning government not take advantage of this? And finally, since I have thought about it, I can't unthink it. I need to know.

I even thought an interesting and funny hook for an adventure or campaign could be the tax collectors laying down the business on the player(s) to recover back-taxes on all their unclaimed dungeon loot.

My question then is this. Has anyone made any sort of system or rules or even had thoughts about this besides me? Should I just put on my comfiest straight-jacket and calm down?

I haven't looked at this yet but I feel like it's a valuable idea. My immediate thought is to start by asking a few questions -

1. Who collects the taxes? Who is the ultimate authority and who collects on their behalf? Do intermediary collectors get a cut?
2. What force is at their disposal e.g. if they are an Emperor, what force do they control that allows them to keep their Empire?
3. What do people who pay the taxes get in return?
4. What is taxed? What are the main sources of taxable wealth?

From those kinds of questions I think we see some approaches and guess that tax will vary from world to world and realm to realm. @Dan Chernozub gave a great example, which I will steal and expand on -

Exampledonia
Taxes are collected on behalf of the Queen in two ways - taxes on licences and taxes on prerogatives.

• Licences turn traders, craftsmen and money-lenders into the Queen's tax intermediaries. They gain safety and commercial privileges and she takes flat amounts from them for licence renewals, calculated to come to about 1/10th of their expected earnings. People are generally comfortable with this system because without a doubt it has been much safer trading since the Queen took the throne, and the condition of the roads has visibly improved. Further, the Queen doesn't allow those who haven't paid for a licence to carry out those activities, protecting the incomes of those who have. Some craftsmen have lately called for border taxes on goods that compete with their services. A concept the Queen is seriously contemplating.
• Prerogatives turn her nobility into tax intermediaries. And she actively pursues a policy of granting titles and lands to powerful people! In return, those people gain the lion's share of the income from any lands, including any mines, forests, rivers or lakes, farms, and settlements. They gain a right to impose fines in their territories, part of which must be passed on. And they can apply for a right to conquer further lands. The Queen maintains a visible "iron fist" in the form of regular and mercenary forces - including character-class equivalents - easily capable of defeating one or two rebellious lords. She further softens up lords with privileges that they come to value, such as apartments in the palace and monopoly licences for their own commercial activities. Recently, some nobles have sought to issue licences on the Queen's behalf, inserting them into the flow of commercial revenues. So far the Queen has been resistant to this concept.

PCs may reject all of the above, but they cannot avoid paying tax when they buy something. Most importantly, if they go along with it they will in due course benefit richly. The Queen is envisioned to have sufficient force at her disposal to take on most adventuring groups... but wouldn't they be richer and more comfortable if they accepted knighthoods from her instead? I suppose I reject the PC-centric argument for those sorts of reasons. 1) How did someone so impotent as they apparently envision ever gain a kingdom or empire in the first place, or keep one? 2) It ignores what's in it for tax payers. 3) PCs can be paying taxes without really noticing. What it does for our world however is create a chain of interest to motivate narrative. We can ask who feels cut out when PCs conquer a rich territory in the form of a dungeon? We can bring forces to aid the PCs when law is on their side. We can initiate civil wars with good cause on both sides. Our world comes further to life.

 

[Istbor]

Well in the world of Itearia, the Emperor is the ultimate authority, various provincial governors/governesses would be the intermediaries. They would use their regional influence to motivate more localized authorities to collect on their behalf, then giving the lion's share to the Emperor.

The Emperor is of course backed by the Imperial host, a sizable army made of up several legions of soldiers who are led by class equivalent NPCs. These also fall under the authority of some of the Emperor's intermediaries, who can call on their local garrisons if needed. On top of that the Circle of Mancery an independent organization of magic users is paid for their services off of these taxes collected. We can probably place militia, guardsmen, and various mercenary bands at this disposal as well.

In return, the people are afforded safety in both rural and urban areas. As well as coverage from a slew of protective laws regarding citizens.

Land, structures, and business will likely be taxed. As well as travel concerning Imperial bridges, passes, and walled cities.
Trade from without the Empire will also garnish a tax as the fee to do business inside of Imperial territory with Imperial citizens.

That is what I have thought of so far. Though, will it be included, and will the characters ever learn the full extent of it? Who is to say? They recently had a 10 minute argument about taking 20 pounds of fish packed in a backpack into battle, so anything is possible.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Of course the flipside is to make the PCs tax collectors. You've asked "what makes high level PCs pay their taxes?" That's the answer: other high level PCs.

After all, if the king is going to hire them to kill the dragon and give them the majority of the loot plus a reward, they're likely to offer the same deal against a bunch of ne'er do well adventurers. Or an upstart colony. Or an amassing army-that-isn't-technically-invading. Or any other number of problems that requesting tax could prove to be a nice gentle and legal way of provoking a conflict that you think is necessary.

 

[Istbor]

Of course the flipside is to make the PCs tax collectors. You've asked "what makes high level PCs pay their taxes?" That's the answer: other high level PCs.

After all, if the king is going to hire them to kill the dragon and give them the majority of the loot plus a reward, they're likely to offer the same deal against a bunch of ne'er do well adventurers. Or an upstart colony. Or an amassing army-that-isn't-technically-invading. Or any other number of problems that requesting tax could prove to be a nice gentle and legal way of provoking a conflict that you think is necessary.

Yeah, that is fairly true.

Interestingly, collecting taxes is a task given to you often by the rulers in Mount & Blade: Warband.
Just in case those peasants down want to cough up that money, it helps to send the best mercenaries this side of Swadia.