Tax strain
Taxes above 33% feel free at first, but sustained high rates quietly build 'tax strain' — capital flight, a shadow economy and brain drain that erode both growth and the very revenue you were chasing.
How it works
Each quarter, if your tax rate exceeds 33%, strain accumulates by (taxRate − 33) × 0.05 up to a maximum of 100. When you drop back to 33% or below, strain heals slowly at 1.2 per quarter — so the damage is sticky and takes far longer to undo than to create.
Strain hits you three ways. It's a direct drag on the growth efficiency multiplier (−strain × 0.0035). Above a strain of 20 it sours business mood and chips at stability each quarter. And it erodes your effective tax take, so past a point higher rates collect less, not more.
The revenue penalty is the cruel twist: your collected revenue is multiplied by (1 − min(0.35, strain × 0.0035)), capping the loss at −35%. So a maxed-out strain can silently confiscate a third of your taxes even while the rate on paper looks lucrative. The game coaches you toward a tax cut once strain crosses 25, and flags a warning at 40.
Formulas
if taxRate > 33: taxStrain = min(100, taxStrain + (taxRate − 33) × 0.05)if taxRate ≤ 33: taxStrain = max(0, taxStrain − 1.2) per quarterrevenue ×= (1 − min(0.35, taxStrain × 0.0035))efficiency −= taxStrain × 0.0035business mood −= strain × 0.015; stability −= strain × 0.004Key numbers
How to play
- ▸Treat 33% as a soft ceiling. Spiking above it in an emergency is fine; parking there for years is self-sabotage.
- ▸Because recovery is only 1.2/quarter, cut taxes early — waiting until the warning at 40 means many years of drag before you're clean.
- ▸If you must raise revenue, grow GDP or improve tax-tech and efficiency focus instead of cranking the rate past 33%.
- ▸Watch the business mood and stability trickle-down above strain 20 — it can quietly tip a shaky regime toward unrest.