The Consultation on Taxation Has Carried
The roll closed at eight o'clock on Thursday evening. The count is Le Council's own and remains so—a ballot is not a leaderboard, and Le Council said when the roll opened that it would be keeping its views to itself. What carried, carried.
Le Council said what carries would be enacted. Le Council is bound by the answer, including the parts of it Le Council did not expect.
What carried
Wealth means everything a citizen holds. Looneys in hand, Looneys committed to a wager that has not yet settled, and shares. This was the clearest answer of the three and it was not close.
It shall fall in bands. The further above the line a citizen sits, the higher the rate upon the portion above it. The ten-largest rule, which has governed since the wealth tax was first filed, is retired.
An unpaid assessment is settled by S.L.U.S.H. Where a citizen owes more than they are carrying, shares are sold to cover it.
Le Council will say the awkward thing itself rather than wait to be asked. The third question did not carry as the other two did. No answer commanded a majority. The sale of shares led a field of three, and the two answers behind it would between them have preferred that nothing be sold at all.
Le Council has read the roll several times and reports this much: on whether an unpaid assessment remains owed, the citizens were clear and were not close. On the remedy, they were neither. Le Council enacts the answer that led, and records that it led rather than triumphed.
What was not on the ballot
The ballot decided the shape. The numbers were always Le Council's to set, and Le Council sets them here rather than leaving citizens to discover them.
The line sits at a hundredth of the ice. A citizen holding less than that share of everything in Hockay is not assessed at all, and most citizens never will be. The line is a proportion rather than a figure, so it moves as the league grows and nobody has to redraw it.
Above the line the rate rises in bands, and is charged upon the portion falling in each rather than upon the whole. A citizen who crosses into a higher band pays more only on what sits above it, and never finds a step where crossing costs more than it gained. There is no cliff to stand beneath.
The rates themselves are set out on your own page, alongside what a citizen is assessed on and what, if anything, they owe. Le Council has published them there rather than here because a citizen's own figure is more use to them than a table.
These rates are deliberately modest, and Le Council has run them against the register before setting them. They fall upon a small number of citizens and move a modest sum each week into the pot that every citizen draws from daily. Le Council reserves the right to adjust them, and undertakes to say so when it does, rather than have the community work it out from the leaderboard.
The assessment is made every matchday. The pot is what the daily redistribution is drawn from, and Le Council is not going to interrupt a ritual that a great many citizens rely upon.
The sale, when a sale is required, happens once a week. Tuesday. What is owed accrues through the week and is settled in one pass, and Le Council does not propose to be coy about which day that is.
A share is worth what it fetches
This is the part Le Council expects to hear about, so it will be plain.
Until today, Hockay reported a citizen's holdings at the price on the board multiplied by the number of shares held. That figure has never been achievable. The board shows what the last share changed hands for; a citizen selling a hundred thousand of them moves the price the whole way down as they go, and collects considerably less than the arithmetic promised.
A citizen wrote to Le Council with the case set out better than Le Council managed: a holding that cost about ten million Looneys, that would fetch about ten million Looneys, and that the leaderboard insisted was worth a hundred and thirty. They observed that spending a further hundred and forty million on the same club would report as twenty-one billion. They noted that Le Council already possessed the instrument to measure this properly, and needed only to apply it.
Le Council has applied it.
From today, a citizen's net worth is what S.L.U.S.H. would settle today—the balance in hand, the Looneys riding on open wagers, and every share valued at what the pool would actually pay for it, net of brokerage. It is the same figure the portfolio page has quietly been showing all along.
A great many net worths will read smaller this morning. Nothing has been taken. Nothing has been sold. The instrument was wrong and is now right, and the tax that follows is assessed on the true figure rather than the flattering one. Le Council would rather correct this before taxing anyone than afterwards.
When a citizen owes more than they are carrying
Le Council has counted, and reports that almost no large holding is held in Looneys. A citizen may therefore be assessed for more than they can pay, and this will be ordinary rather than exceptional.
What happens is this.
If the balance covers the assessment, it is taken, and there is nothing further. If it does not, what remains stands as an outstanding assessment, recorded and visible. A notice will appear at the top of every page for as long as it stands. It will say what is owed and when S.L.U.S.H. will act.
A citizen who would rather choose which shares go may sell whatever they like before Tuesday. That is the purpose of telling them.
On Tuesday, S.L.U.S.H. sells what is required and no more, into the pool, at market. The shares return to open ice, where anybody may buy them. No single settlement takes more than a quarter of a club's reserve—the pools are not deep, and one citizen's bill should not empty a market that other citizens trade in. What the cap holds back is raised from the next club instead.
What cannot be raised is not owed. If a citizen's Looneys and shares together do not cover the assessment, S.L.U.S.H. takes what is there and the remainder is written off. It is not carried, not recorded against them, and not pursued. Le Council will not chase a citizen for Looneys that do not exist.
Choosing how
A citizen forced to sell should at least choose the manner of it. Four instructions are available, and may be changed at any hour:
- The dearest first. Fewest shares disturbed. This is the standing instruction unless a citizen says otherwise.
- The cheapest first. Keeps the valuable holdings, sells more of the rest.
- The largest position first. Keeps a spread across clubs.
- The smallest position first. Keeps the flagship whole.
Le Council will show what each would do at today's prices before a citizen commits to one. A citizen who has not chosen will be asked to.
What does not change
- The dormancy tax is untouched. Ten percent from accounts that have not claimed a daily reward in seven days, exactly as before.
- The redistribution is untouched. The pot is split among every citizen who claimed their daily reward, every day, as it always has been.
- Nobody is asked to divest. No holding is unwound. No club changes hands by order of Le Council.
Le Council's own note
Le Council asked a question it did not know the answer to, and has been handed an answer with real teeth in it. It would have been open to Le Council to write this rule alone. Le Council declined, and continues to think the declining was the point.
The register is public. Anybody who wishes to count may count. Le Council would still rather they did.