Tax Time

I tend to use 50% and lower it from there. That said, if you're willing to build lots of morale buildings, somewhere around sixty percent is as high as you'll likely want to go.

ive heard of people taxing up to 80% when they get the moral reasources and build the moral building, and i guess you can give yourself a moral trait

Personally i hover around 39% during 'peacetime' but if conflict erupts, i typically jump taxes to closer to 50% to give myself some capitol to rush ships & defenses on captured planets.

In the mid-1960s, the top British income tax rate was 91.5 percent on incomes above 115,000 pounds. This was only slightly below the 95 percent top rate during World War II. By contrast, the top U.S. rate was just 70 percent at that time, thanks to the Kennedy tax cut.

Yep, i'm aiming for something crazy like that. As long as my approval is high enough for my party to stay in power, I would boost the tax rate up higher and higher.

Spending usually 100% or as high as possible till I run out of funds.

Finding and fully exploiting a morale resource via a mining starbase really helps with approval/morale, and allows you to crank the tax rate later without risking rebellion. In one game I was lucky enough to have 2 such resources near my starting system, I was able to crank up to about 75% taxes in the end game and still be around 75-80% approval Poor little buggers... (literally and figuratively).

95% tax rate in ww2 ?! ouch... I guess being successful doesn't pay in some countries. I suppose companies with goverment contracts were exempt from the tax? I suppose that could lead to war profiteering.

I try to keep tax rate 'nominal' as possible.. but something like a recession or unexpected war hikes the taxes right back up.

Tax Rate(%)-Approval(-%)
090-347
080-192
070-163
060-090

It is quite possible to hike the rate up to 80% with later morale improvements, a resource or two. Early on though, 60% is about all thats feasible possible to counter, especially since you can't propaganda the smaller planets anymore.

It's not just morale you have to watch though, it's population growth. It's all very well finding the balance for morale but if the population is slowly declining it will set you up for problems later on.

I keep mine low at the beginning to boost my population growth - around 15 - 20%

The difference in approval rating is very large between 49 & 50%, currently I'm set at 49% with 100% spending.

G-Force