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prokopetz:

(With reference to this post here.)

Nah, there are plenty of things you can do gamewise that constitute direct tax evasion (i.e., as opposed to shenanigans that are merely tax evasion adjacent).

For example, suppose that the player characters are inhabitants of a medieval village whose yearly tax assessment has come due, and the royal tax assessor is touring the village in order to estimate its total wealth and thereby calculate how much is owed in tax.

The player characters’ mission is basically to run around behind the tax assessor’s back playing reverse Weekend at Bernie’s and ensure that the village appears to be much less prosperous than it really is. Keep those cattle out of sight (easier said than done), disguise that lavishly appointed tavern as a church (churches are tax exempt!), maybe cover up any discrepancy between the village’s actual and reported population by faking a plague or two (where are they going to get that many skulls on short notice?), and so forth.

Basically, the easiest way to make tax evasion gameable is by contriving a scenario where taxable assets are assessed rather than reported, then identifying entertaining ways for the player characters to fuck around with the assessment process.

Tags:

#some of the context #story ideas I will never write #games #(although it seems worth noting that I *did* once see a game that was ”filing your taxes but you’re a dragon”) #(maybe you can have the dragon do some tax evasion?) #death mention #illness mention