Tax
In New Eden there are compulsory contributions payable to either NPCs or other players. These are either added on to the cost of goods or transactions, or automatically deducted from players' income. Its impossible to avoid paying taxes all together, but there are some ways players can reduce the amount of tax they pay. There are various types of taxes.
Corporation tax
A player corporation can set a corporation tax on its members. This is paid automatically from the member's earning to the corporation's master wallet. Player corporations can choose to set their own tax rate, but for NPC corporations the tax rate is always 11%.
Corporation tax is paid on all bounty and mission reward payouts over 100,000 ISK.
It is not paid on ISK in a member's wallet, sale orders or transactions, or on the time bonus for missions.
For information on setting corporation tax rates, see Forming a Corporation.
Equipment tax
Equipment tax is paid when a player reprocesses items in an NPC station.
The level of the tax is based on the player's personal or corporation standings (whichever is the higher) with the NPC corporation that owns the station. The base tax rate, with no standings, is 5%. This can be reduced to 0% with the required standings (which are 6.67 standings). For this reason, it is normally beneficial for players to reprocess items in stations where they have good standings with the owner.
There are several skills which can assist in increasing standings with NPCs. See NPC standings for more details.
For more information on equipment tax, see: Equipment Tax
Maintenance tax
Players taking part in Factional Warfare are able to donate the Loyalty Points (LP) they earn to upgrade the system their faction controls. However, when they do this maintenance tax is paid.
Maintenance tax starts at 0% but increases in accordance with the faction tier to a maximum of 75%
For more information on system upgrades and maintenance tax see: System Upgrades
Manufacturing tax
(To be verified)
For Alpha Clones only there is a tax on industry jobs. This is set at 2% and cannot be altered.
Planetary import/export tax
Players doing Planetary Interaction can choose to export the materials they process to a Player-Owned Customs Office (POCO), but in doing so they will incur a planetary export tax. They can also import materials for use by factory planets, which will incur a planetary import tax.
The planetary import/export tax is made up of two elements. The first is a base NPC tax rate. The base NPC rate in high security space is 10%, but it can be reduced with skills training (see Customs Code Expertise below). The second element is the additional tax levied by the player corporation which owns the POCO, which can be set based on the user's standings towards that corporation. At a maximum the total tax rate could be 100%, so players are advised to check the tax rate before exporting their materials to a POCO.
The skill Customs Code Expertise reduces the NPC tax by 10% per level. At level V this reduces the NPC tax down to 5%. The skill does nothing if you are using POCOs that are located in null security, low security or wormhole space.
For more information on planetary import/export tax, see Colony Management - Tax Rates and Planetary Interaction - Base Costs
Sales tax
There are two separate taxes that are paid when items are sold on market: Transaction tax and broker fee.
Sales tax is paid on market transactions. It becomes due once an item has been sold, and is paid by the seller. It is automatically deducted from the sale price before the ISK goes into the seller's wallet. It will be recorded in the player's wallet as "Transaction Tax". Sales tax is paid in addition to any brokers fees.
The base sales tax rate is 5%, but this can be reduced to 2.5% with Accounting V.
It is important for traders to bear sales tax in mind, because it will be taken automatically and therefore reduce their profits. If a trader is dealing with low-margin items they will need to take sales tax into account to avoid trading at a loss.
Broker fee is the second tax that is paid on all market transactions. This fee is paid when market sell or buy order is created with duration longer than "immediate". The fee is not returned if the market order is taken down or expires.
In NPC stations broker fee starts at 5% and is reduced by Broker Relations skill, the standing towards station owner faction and the standing towards station owner corporation.
The equation for NPC broker fees is[1]
- [math] \text{Broker fee} = 5\% - 0.3\% \times \text{Broker relations level} - 0.03\% \times \text{Faction standing} - 0.02\% \times \text{Corporation standing} [/math]
Important to note is that the broker fee is based on unmodified standings and does not take any standing skills into account.
In player owned Upwell structure markets the broker fee is set by the structure owner. Skills have no impact on this fee. The structure owned can set different tax rates for different standings.
For more information on sales tax, see Trading.