Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Jack_Spade on <02-24-16/1240:35>
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So I've got a tax problem.
A character with a national SIN pays 15% of his gross income in taxes.
Now let us assume he also happens to owe a substantial amount of debt to some... private financiers, let's say 30k at 10% a month.
Let's further assume the character earns 30.000 from a run - payed with a certified cred stick.
Now, would you say he can just use the money to directly pay his debts, or would you say he needs to deduct 4500 first and therefore won't be able to pay of the loan shark?
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Gross REPORTED income.
If the country doesn't know you're making income they can't tax it.
So if that income is untraceable (sounds like it is, as it's a certified cred-stick) then theoretically he reports whatever the heck he likes to the government.
However I would assume that they checkup on how much your spending and the like so I'd deduct the national sin cost after paying the loanshark as the loanshark money is unreported income (and untraceable as he was paid via certified cred-stick).
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Indeed. It is everything that is reported. However, you best have SOME reported income from some means if you're living above a Squatter or Traveller lifestyle. A middle lifestyle and not earning a dime tends to stick out in people's minds in some quarters. And even the mob doesn't mess with the IRS.
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I would rule tax goes before all else as it really isn't real tax you are paying but bribes and fees to keep having that SIN without having it revoked or turned into a criminal SIN with worse restrictions.
So
1 - Tax
2 - loan
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Maybe tax time is good time for a Runner to burn their current SIN.
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Maybe tax time is good time for a Runner to burn their current SIN.
Sure. Right after he repays the karma he got from taking a negative quality.....
But until then; 15% of EVERY run please. No exceptions.
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Maybe tax time is good time for a Runner to burn their current SIN.
Sure. Right after he repays the karma he got from taking a negative quality.....
But until then; 15% of EVERY run please. No exceptions.
Fake SIN, guess I should've specified that.
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My question is centered on the word "gross income" in the rules text.
Usually, if you are self employed and have debt you can reduce your tax burden accordingly.
But since this is a game written by Americans and I am utterly unfamiliar with what an American writer would consider the reported gross income of a criminal 60 years in the future, I'm unsure what the intent of this rule is.
(Because gross income in Germany includes not only money but also in kind benefits, material and services received. And calculating the value of loot you didn't actually sell seems to be a tad to harsh...)
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Oh if it's a fake SIN, you cycle those out every 2-3 months unless your damned and determined to keep your loft. That's why I have a house boat, I just move piers and present new paperwork every few months. No taxes, no need to spend a day moving, and no worries about getting busted with all my gear while moving to a new apartment. It can stay nice and snug in my smuggling compartments.
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SINner negative quality is off the top. It's actually a pretty rough negative quality.
Shadowrun, fortunately, doesn't go into tax evasion rules. You and your table are of course free to fluff it however you want, taxes, money laundering, expenses to maintain your double life, whatever. But RAW, its a cut off the gross.
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But until then; 15% of EVERY run please. No exceptions.
Does the Johnson withhold for you? How are you getting the W-2 for those runs? Would you need a W-2 from each Johnson, or one W-2 per fixer?
If you're UCAS, is a DocWagon contract mandated, and is there a penalty for not carrying one?
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Yeah, it's 15% off whatever you earn, no exceptions. It's a negative quality tax, not an IRS one; players don't get to declare 25% of their income as "deductible for hazardous working conditions".
It's a game mechanic you paid karma for, so it's already meta. No fictional reasoning needed, just reduce your payments by 15%, full stop.
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I don't mind paying the 15% cash. It's the major headache how to process this ingame and how to handle non-monetary loot...
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I don't mind paying the 15% cash. It's the major headache how to process this ingame and how to handle non-monetary loot...
Services rendered to your friendly neighborhood money launderer.
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It's the major headache how to process this ingame and how to handle non-monetary loot...
Oh that's easy.
You can go to any local IRS branch with the loot/list of items for an appraisal. :P
What's that? You don't want to walk into a federal building with a prototype or list of the items you lifted from your last corp raid?
Yes, that can be annoying, but honestly so long as you didn't rob a federal facility in the process and pay your tax they really do not care, because just like the historic Minnesota Grass tax, Revenue officials must guarantee confidentiality to those paying.
The right to pay anonymously is important to ensure that individuals are allowed the constitutional guarantee against self-incrimination.
And if taking a list because you don't feel comfortable hauling in the loot,please try to describe the items to the best of your ability to ensure the best possible assessment.
Otherwise if you just put down say, 10 automatics lifted from security guards without listing brands, the assessor can and will assign the highest possible value for that category of weapons even though they know full well that particular corp uses cheap knock-offs.
Also make sure the list is disposable, I recommend flash paper, because while the IRS can't disclose anything, the cops sitting down the street might stop you for a chat and you don't want that list falling into their hands.
Again they can't ask what you were at the IRS for and the IRS can't tell them, so just make sure there is nothing on you can be traced back to anything.
Services rendered to your friendly neighborhood money launderer.
But that is the rub, the fence/money launderer is never going to pay you the full value of the item and your tax guy isn't going to care that YOU only got 30% of the value of the item, the IRS will still want the tax based against the listed value of the item.
It's like those poor bastards who win a car on a game show only to get slapped with a punitive gift tax that is still based on the value of the car and not the actual price you might get for it.
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It's the major headache how to process this ingame and how to handle non-monetary loot...
Oh that's easy.
You can go to any local IRS branch with the loot/list of items for an appServices rendered to your friendly neighborhood money launderer.
But that is the rub, the fence/money launderer is never going to pay you the full value of the item and your tax guy isn't going to care that YOU only got 30% of the value of the item, the IRS will still want the tax based against the listed value of the item.
It's like those poor bastards who win a car on a game show only to get slapped with a punitive gift tax that is still based on the value of the car and not the actual price you might get for it.
No rub, you're just making it more complicated than you have to. It's a negative quality, with a definitive mechanical penalty. You don't need in-game justification like "Well, how does the IRS know how much Joe Shadowrunner made in a month?". All you need to know is that any money you gain, you don't get to keep X%. That's it, no muss, no fuss, Bob's your uncle.
If you want to rationalize it from an in-game perspective then good luck with that; I agree with Crimsondude, personally; you have to launder all your liquidity to avoid leaving a papertrail for the man to find, which your launderer takes a flat X% cut of your earnings to do. Done. Forget about the IRS, that kind of thing is covered by Lifestyles, just focus on exactly what the negative quality states and treat it based on the text that describes the mechanical disadvantage, and not on in-game, fictional justifications...
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Actually the rub is the whole percentage of all earnings toward the SIN provider is semi-ludicrous exactly because we are largely criminals with ill gotten gains and we merely showed the next illogical step in the process that the designers seem to want with their description of the Quality.
They should have just described it as the cost of doing biz and left it at that instead of trying to make it out as actually paying papacorp or whatever nation, when in actuality that money would be going to the launderer, your fixer, other persons who help maintain that persona or otherwised buried into the Lifestyles.
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Actually the rub is the whole percentage of all earnings toward the SIN provider is semi-ludicrous exactly because we are largely criminals with ill gotten gains and we merely showed the next illogical step in the process that the designers seem to want with their description of the Quality.
They should have just described it as the cost of doing biz and left it at that instead of trying to make it out as actually paying papacorp or whatever nation, when in actuality that money would be going to the launderer, your fixer, other persons who help maintain that persona or otherwised buried into the Lifestyles.
Think about that, and WHO you are talking about, and look around today.
People are getting fired from jobs for TWITTER comments today for fucks sake! You really think a mega corp, that lives and dies by its public image, is going to tolerate having even the rumor of a corp employee being a 'violent, chaotic psychpath'?
Remember, in exchange for karma ALL you get is a corp SIN. You are not some VIP, you are not elite untouchable corporate citizen. You are Citizen #163T-H7F4-142H-45GA, A fully owned, legal slave of Mother Corp.
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Folks, as others have said (as have I) MANY times, its an optional, negative quality. There is no mechanical, or theratrical reason to take it. BUT, if you do, you agree to lose 15% of your income. Full Stop.
Be that from Runs, mugged school kids for lunch money, selling women to brothels, organs to hospitals, flesh to ghouls, paydata to corps: Before you get to write it down on your sheet, you lose 15%.
The IRS has you GPS'd. The Mob has a leg breaker ON your leg ALL the time (really interesting going to the bathroom...). Granny keeps stealing money for Novacrack. The Troll down the hall keeps ruffing you up and stealing your wallet. Explain any way you want, or don't. You still lose the 15%.
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Explain any way you want, or don't. You still lose the 15%.
QFT.
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What Reaver said. Book explicitly says you lose a percentage, that percentage is gone. Reskin it if you want, but the bones and muscle (the mechanics) are still there.
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For what its worth, when you have a SIN, you can get yourself a license as a journalist, private detective, bodyguard, consultant, escort, or whatever, and claim your shadow work (and even legit jobs) in such a way that the IRS is satisfied, and the Knights aren't knocking on your door.
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Folks, as others have said (as have I) MANY times, its an optional, negative quality. There is no mechanical, or theratrical reason to take it. BUT, if you do, you agree to lose 15% of your income. Full Stop.
Quoting again for emphasis.
What Reaver said. Book explicitly says you lose a percentage, that percentage is gone. Reskin it if you want, but the bones and muscle (the mechanics) are still there.
You might even say that the player has to roleplay the consequences.
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Folks, as others have said (as have I) MANY times, its an optional, negative quality. There is no mechanical, or theratrical reason to take it. BUT, if you do, you agree to lose 15% of your income. Full Stop.
Quoting again for emphasis.
What Reaver said. Book explicitly says you lose a percentage, that percentage is gone. Reskin it if you want, but the bones and muscle (the mechanics) are still there.
You might even say that the player has to roleplay the consequences.
If the player has an idea of how/what the income loss is going to, I'm a huge fan of playing along. Fluff it up and play a scene out, or just ignore it. Either way write down 850 Nuyen every time the GM hands out 1,000.
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I have a player in my game that has been doing a good job of role playing how his new character has basically fallen into Shadowrunning after just recently quitting his job (Corp limited SIN). He's been heavily emphasizing how the money they've been getting in the first few days is more than he's ever seen. I'm really going to enjoy seeing how he reacts when he has to figure out how to report the income without raising suspicion. 8)
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I have a player in my game that has been doing a good job of role playing how his new character has basically fallen into Shadowrunning after just recently quitting his job (Corp limited SIN). He's been heavily emphasizing how the money they've been getting in the first few days is more than he's ever seen. I'm really going to enjoy seeing how he reacts when he has to figure out how to report the income without raising suspicion. 8)
Enter the fine art of "consulting," also known as BS'ing a company to pay you to help them realize things they would have realized without you, and yet still make it look good to pay you! That should open up some leeway in how you report the income, as long as you can get creative, but creativity is what gets the consultant paid in the first place! ;D
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Consultants, Independent Contractors, General Contractors... aka Shadowrunners. : )
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For what it's worth I call it this way ...
you give up 15% right off the bat before paying anything.
why? ... because you are either laundering the money so you can keep it unreported and paying a fee for the service or you are reporting it and paying taxes
simple, straight forward, and gives the negative quality some teeth
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Agreed with Banshee. You're either taking steps to make sure the money can't be traced by the IRS, or you're paying taxes. Either one costs. You could get into the nitty gritty of what kinds of income get reported and what don't, but do you really want to roleplay tax season?
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...but do you really want to roleplay tax season?
Could be the start of a run.
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I actually love that idea; start a campaign where the players are all 'legit' people, doing their taxes, and realize 'shit, I can't pay for that!'
They go looking for some way to make that money, and find a lucrative offer... If they don't mind getting their hands dirty.
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So a variation of Risky Business? :P
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...but do you really want to roleplay tax season?
Could be the start of a run.
http://www.shadowrun.com/2070/2013/05/25/the-taxman-cometh/ (http://www.shadowrun.com/2070/2013/05/25/the-taxman-cometh/) ;D