Are Pensions and Unemployment Subsidies taxed?

[bilhgl]

In Victoria Two tax is collected off wages.
Do wages include the state pension and unemployment subsidies paid to the pops? and there for taxed just like government paid wages and wages from rgo and factory production? Or are they some how not taxed?

 

[cetvrtak]

In Victoria Two tax is collected off wages.
Do wages include the state pension and unemployment subsidies paid to the pops? and there for taxed just like government paid wages and wages from rgo and factory production? Or are they some how not taxed?

Does it matter?

And, no they are not taxed. If they were that would be plain dumb. You give them some money and then take back some of it. Obviously you could have given them in the first place the amount they receive in the end.

 

[bilhgl]

And, no they are not taxed. If they were that would be plain dumb. You give them some money and then take back some of it. Obviously you could have given them in the first place the amount they receive in the end.

How do you know this can you explain, since when you look at pops income, even when you have high pensions, it only displays one thing which is called wages? So are wages including or excluding pop pensions?

 

[bilhgl]

I did a test.
I found an old hmp save game and loaded it up. Its 1898 japan and most importantly they have the acceptable pension reform.
At the start of the test craftsmen were paying £249 in daily taxes.

I closed all factories.

Even though all craftsmen are unemployed, they are paying taxes of £31 daily. This tax can only come from the pensions since with factories all closed they have no other income.

I cut social spending to zero, now the craftsmen are paying no tax.

So by this exploration. I think I've found out that pensions are taxed.
I would guess the same is true for unemployment subsidies and maybe negative tariffs?

edit to fix the screen shots

 

[Guedes]

I think it does, pensions are just cash for the pops, i doubt the game differentiates what part comes from wages and what part comes from pensions.

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

And, no they are not taxed. If they were that would be plain dumb. You give them some money and then take back some of it.

Welcome to reality.

 

[Vohen]

To be fair, it does make a lot of sense, from a game code perspective, to tax unemployment subsidies, as it simplifies a lot on calculations.
Without that, they'd need to code tax exemptions specifically for unemployed pops in this specific situation, or maybe change the order in which the game calculates income and taxes.
Needless to say, both are very much non trivial changes, and would take a lot of work to test and bugfix, to essentially arrive at the same result as simply giving the subsidies and then taxing them.

I have a question regarding pensions though, pops (afaik) only represents adult males (from which the game can infer the total population), so it'd seem like the elderly don't even pay taxes at all, which would mean pensions aren't taxed, differently from subsidies.
Is that correct?

 

[Laveley]

To be fair, it does make a lot of sense, from a game code perspective, to tax unemployment subsidies, as it simplifies a lot on calculations.
Without that, they'd need to code tax exemptions specifically for unemployed pops in this specific situation, or maybe change the order in which the game calculates income and taxes.
Needless to say, both are very much non trivial changes, and would take a lot of work to test and bugfix, to essentially arrive at the same result as simply giving the subsidies and then taxing them.

I have a question regarding pensions though, pops (afaik) only represents adult males (from which the game can infer the total population), so it'd seem like the elderly don't even pay taxes at all, which would mean pensions aren't taxed, differently from subsidies.
Is that correct?

First of all; it makes sense both in-game and in reality, or do you really think government's keep track of people who receives subsidies to write off the income tax? At least in my country that doesnt happen. Theres only two certainties in life; death and taxes.

As for pensions; that is incorrect. Pensions in-game are just an amount of cash that is distributed equally among the pops, i dont remember now if all types of pops receive them or just some classes. Anyways, just disregard the "total population" count in-game, its just an abstraction to add some realistic flavor but not a single game mechanic affects it (that i know), the only population that matters is the one englobed in the POPs or, as you called it, "adult male" one.

 

[Vohen]

First of all; it makes sense both in-game and in reality, or do you really think government's keep track of people who receives subsidies to write off the income tax? At least in my country that doesnt happen. Theres only two certainties in life; death and taxes.

First of all, what I was saying isn't mutually exclusive with what you're saying.
I haven't mentioned governments in reality at all, the point was to provide another point of reference for this discussion, from something I'm very familiar with, coding, independently from what may happen or not in reality.
So there's no need to be so condescending, in my previous post, I "didn't think" anything regarding real life governments.

Second of all, do you think your government is the only model in the world?
There are almost as many government models as there are governments in the world, so it's quite stupid to think that just because one doesn't do something, no one does it.
Mine, for example, only taxes income when it's above a threshold (and unemployment subsidies are well, well below that threshold), so those subsidies aren't taxed.
Yes, it's not like they are keeping track of just subsidies beneficiaries to not tax, but they are keeping track of a much larger group, in which those beneficiaries are included.
Sure, if PDX has to take a model, it'd be more likely to be the Swedish one, but that's not at all what you implied in your post.

As for pensions; that is incorrect. Pensions in-game are just an amount of cash that is distributed equally among the pops, i dont remember now if all types of pops receive them or just some classes. Anyways, just disregard the "total population" count in-game, its just an abstraction to add some realistic flavor but not a single game mechanic affects it (that i know), the only population that matters is the one englobed in the POPs or, as you called it, "adult male" one.

I see.
Has there been a test done here, similarly to the previous one in this thread?

 

[bilhgl]

Has there been a test done here, similarly to the previous one in this thread?

I have tested this and can confirm pensions are paid to all pop types except for slaves which I hadn't tested.

I'd like to say that I agree pop subsidies being taxed makes sense from a game coding perspective. And I assumed this was the case, however when I asked around most players told me that pop subsidies weren't taxed (which makes sense as a knee jerk answer) however no one told me how they knew this so I tested it.

Why did I wanted to know this so bad? I wanted to calculated GDP based on income earned by the producing pops (farmers, labourers, aristocrats, artisans, craftsmen, clerks, capitalists).
By accounting for the effective tax rate, their population and the taxes paid on these pop types you can get a figure that is equal to the total income of all economic activity in your economy (ignoring gold income and government treasury and borrowing). However now knowing pop subsidies are included in the pop taxes I now know that I was double counting some sum of the national income.