Hi, I'm new on the forum, 2 days ago I was a vanilla player and now I have a thousand mods. NRaas story progression+ money module among them. I'd like to set up a realistic tax system with different net worth or income brackets. So I have 3 questions:
1. When does EA consider sims to be rich? I heard some conflicting information - 50k family funds, 50k net worth, or 100k of either. Which is it?
2. How do you change that with MC?
3. When do you personally consider sims to be low, middle and high income? Feel free to mention different systems too. I went with 3 brackets first for the sake of simplicity.

Hello.

I don't know when EA claims sims to be rich. In my game, any sim or sims that have 6-figures and a paid off house are considered rich. Middle to lower incomes pay 1% while retired sims don't pay anything.

To set it up, you have to set up castes within SP. https://www.nraas.net/community/Sto...Income-Tax-Rate

This second link is not about SP money, but explains the caste system. It's easy once you figure it out. https://www.nraas.net/community/sto...sion/topic11835

You can make things as complicated as you'd like. I keep it to three tax brackets for simplicity that you mentioned.

It's 100,00 net worth if I remember right (that may just be Nraas' default). I will fire up the game and see where it is to change it- I think it's under the town options.

Edit: It's under Story Progression's Main menu, then pick options: money

I do have neighborhoods where I do tax brackets using the caste system. Usually I set a caste "poor" for people with a net worth less than 16,500 (the starting funds for a lone sim) and set their taxes at 1% (which is the EA default). Most of the town sits at 2% tax rate. I have a tax bracket "wealthy" that's people with over 100,000 net worth and a tax rate of 5%. If I play a neighborhood long enough I set up a final caste "rich" of net worth over 250,000 and a tax rate of 8%.

There is a slight problem with some neighborhoods. Master controller makes inactive households pay bills as well and some of the families EA has given a bigger and more elaborate house than the family can support. For example there's a family in Bridgeport (the Big Bling family) that has a net worth of over $430,000 including a house with a pool, 2 hot tubs, and two of the highest value vehicles in their garage. There's two sims who have decent jobs (level 6 musician, level 5 sports), one sim who start the game unemployed, and a teenager. Because their house is so expensive, they will not be able to pay their bills. It doesn't help that Bridgeport jobs are all at reduced hours (most jobs only work 4 or 5 hours a day). So just going by a family's net worth doesn't always set the bills where the family can pay them.

I think I remember seeing some stuff for that somewhere... Let me see if I can find it...
In Household_0xa9ba9a66e6364a5e, it says that sims worry about lack of money when their funds get below 500 simoleons, and other sims gossip about how much money a sim has if their funds are over 30,000.
Celebrities are more likely to gain celebrity level if their family funds are above 100,000. (CelebrityLevelModification_0xa9103eaf0db0ac5d)
If a sim's lot value exceeds 100,000, the sim will be considered rich. However, it seems that in the future world, the lot value is 500,000 before a sim is considered rich. (SimDescription_0x2f781fbc26bb4d8a)
One of the factors for sims being attracted to other sims is their wealth. Over 20k gives a low attraction bonus (+2), 75k gives a medium bonus (+5), and 150k gives a high bonus (+10). (Relationship_0x5da0f93630ce52d4)



I don't use NRAAS StoryProgression, and don't do anything in MasterController that affects what qualifies as wealthy.



Well, looking at premade houses in the game, I feel like the houses under 25-30k are generally the lower-class homes (since they're generally starter homes or a bit above starter home price). Homes pricier than that, but under... 60-80k, maybe? I feel those are usually intended for more middle class homes. And of course, the really expensive houses, worth over 100k, are for the rich sims.
I don't have super cut-and-dry rules, though. I also play with a mod that increases bills for a bit of added difficulty.

Thank you so much by the way, I did check out the links you mentioned earlier, so I know how to set the actual castes up in the technical sense, I'm just unsure about what my criteria should be. I'm playing with maximum realism - high bills (10%), minimum wage, job interviews and rare promotions, and you gotta pay for everything (gym, taxi, quick meals). On top of that I'm playing the wishacy challenge so it's really tough.

But yeah, I sort of knew from the start that for proper realism, taxes should be progressive. What discouraged me was the overwhelming number of settings in SP and the fact that I didn't really know what my brackets should be.

Thank you! I thought it would be modifiable in MC because that's what I had read on another forum. I don't have any intention of changing it to be honest, just wanted to be sure what the default in-game value was given all the conflicting information.

Actually... I ended up removing SP from my Packages file, for now at least, because I wasn't a fan of the fact that even when I disable progression, it can still work in the background and make sims advance in their careers and such. Not that I'm against it, but I'd worry it wouldn't be quite fair towards my sim given all the anti-quality of life mods I just got. And I wasn't really willing to deal with all the settings, they're far too overwhelming. I think I'll just start with watching a detailed 5-hour tutorial at some point, because the realistic tax brackets are still on my mind.

And yeah, I noticed what you mentioned. My 10% bills mod may have actually been a bit too harsh... the Bunch family moved into the gym, while Nick and Holly Alto moved into a smaller house, not sure where, but they live with Miraj Alvi, I checked with Nraas MC demographics (Vita's dead). The Landgraabs are still doing well, however. But on the other hand, weirdly enough, the poorest family has managed to keep their house, but someone else had to move in with them. Oh well.

Thank you so much for the caste ideas and exact values as well! This is overall really close to what I want to implement. I'll have to adjust the percentages somehow, though, because if my dirt poor, empty-lot-owning, barely-employed, SNAP-enrolled sim with 1300 simoleons to their name can deal with 10% bills (instead of the default 1.3%) AND the utilities mod, anyone can. I'll relax the rules a tiny bit, but I might just exchange a bit for the income tax. say, 5% property and 5% income. But it still feels too low for real life conditions.

Wow, I had no idea wealth was a factor in attraction. Thanks for the detailed breakdown!

I honestly want to analyze each and every family's income and property value to be absolutely sure what the general state of the neighborhood is, and what really constitutes a poor vs middle class family. The issue is, I reallyyyy don't feel like doing it, and I can't help feeling like there must be an easier, or more automated/efficient way of doing it. Nraas MC always gives me alphabetical lists no matter what criteria I choose, and it's a pain in the ass to go back and forth checking.

I also wish there was a way to calculate a household's real wealth in the game, adjusted for the number of people that live in it. For example, I imagine it's much easier to fend for yourself as Jamie Jolina than Iqbal Alvi with 2 sons who can't contribute financially, even if, technically, both households are in the same tax bracket.

Yeah, I was searching for stuff, came across the relationship entry, and was like, "Oh, is that how EA's attraction system works?"

And yeah, the size of a household also makes a difference. The worth of a property in relation to class won't be 100% accurate. Even if it's a really basic house for cheap furnishings, a place for a small household will generally be cheaper than a property for a large household. Unless you're planning on having the sims packed in like sardines, anyway. Imagine eight sims in The Monotone house in Sunset Valley... 😭

LOL... well to be fair now that I messed up the bills and the game made some families merge, I do wonder how they live. Some kind of sleep rotation system? I also added diseases and yeah...

Well, babies, toddlers, and pets survive households without cribs and food bowls, so there's a chance of survival. Then again, I've also heard horror stories of sims glitching, getting into impossible routing issues, and dying in front a rabbit hole. And depending on the diseases enabled... Good gravy, I tested llama pox, and it was like hobbits traversing Mordor with an evil life-sucking ring.

Storyprogression can be a bit overwhelming at first. You've already got some good replies regarding the technicality of the caste systems and how to set them up. If you decide to give it another go, SarahSims posted their settings, which are great to use as a baseline when starting out. Use some or all of the settings, whatever fits your game best.
https://simsarahsarah.tumblr.com/st...gressiongeneral
https://simsarahsarah.tumblr.com/storyprogressioncaste