Business licensing and it's current state

[Xaleya]

3 hours ago, Fancy Toothpaste said:

We're also forgetting the fact that people literally pay real life money in the form of donations to the server in order to run their business in the first place (/blip and /bad rights). The more inconvenient you make it to run a business, the less likely people will even bother and the less roleplay you'll have on the server.

 

If I have a business that hardly breaks even, is just there to enrich my roleplay and the roleplay of others and I pay real money to do this, is it fair to force me to run this business all the time just to break even?

Right now I lease a general goods script business for 15k a month. With the original 30k per month lisence cost, that'd bring my bare-bones opporation costs to 25k a month. That wouldn't be so bad if I earned the 1k per entrence, but I don't. I make 4k per hour of active roleplay which always ends up taking more time depending on how busy my business is, or how much I feel like roleplaying with myself. Throw in the cost of ordering components as a cherry on top, and suddenly the whole thing just doesn't seem all that enticing to opporate. I could charge people way more for goods in an attempt to pinch pennies, but how does that help the roleplay of myself and others?

What happens if a person is being actively extorted every week? What happens if a person has a real-life job and can't constantly run their business? What happens if a business employs multiple players and needs them to opporate? I'm a single person running a single business. I couldn't really imagine if my business needed multiple staff-members.

 

I feel that these lisences have been constructed with the intention of punishing certain businesses that make "too much money" without realizing that they also harm many other businesses and players on the server. As it stands, the lisences  decentivise people to open and opporate unique businesses that provide roleplay without making an exceptional profit. There are better ways.

Like the anti-monopoly laws, that sounds better than licenses aren't required unless the business reaches X profit margin.

[SpritDodo]

I don't know if it was already said but to be honest the whole thing behind putting up a business is not well thought. Usually yeah you have to license a business under a name and owner(s). You have to also specify which area your business operates which could be the licenses. But then there are taxes to be paid, for the business income, the employees and almost everything the business owns. On the other side however there are also incentives given to business like no taxes on new employees for 1 year, tax return on buying new equipments for the business (such as vehicles or equipment for the business itself like in the case of a fast food restaurant). The taxation system is in my opinion lacking and instead of creating a way to target those businesses that make a lot of money you should create a better tax system and ways to legally get around paying taxes. For example you usually don't have to pay taxes on profits if you re-invest them in the business. You should pay taxes when you withdraw money from the business which is called divendi. 

 

Right now I feel like the system works only in two way either you pay for licenses and make your business legit or you don't and become illegal. Irl there's no black or white there's also grey where you can legally avoid paying taxes if you are smart enough.

[Notbond]

 Seems like the gov have responded to this thread and said they'll work with PM to ensure licensing prices are set at a fair price. There's lots of costs/pressures associated with a business on GTAW which is one of the reasons we implemented the 4k bonus. I don't want to see this undone with licensing costs that are too high. I'll make sure legal fm is also kept in the loop regarding these costs so we can keep them managable.

 

While this could be taken IC, admins have a lot of OOC intervention in the economy ensuring that it runs as well as possible, so I do see the need to get involved and realise why this thread was made.  There's other good economy suggestions on this thread but will probably get lost here so I'd encourage you to put them in the game suggestion section if they're not already. 

[Wuhtah]

Going to lock and archive this thread as it has become inactive. Feel free to PM me to bring it back!