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So i'm flicking through the 2018 rulebook, and it states below

"Helmawr's main obligation to the Imperium is to provide a tithe which takes the form of a percentage of all the goods Necromunda produces. As the entire production capacity of the world is given over to providing manufactured goods for the never-ending demands of Mankind, the tithe is taken as a straight discount on the revenue earned."


So based upon the last sentence,"the tithe is taken as a straight discount on the revenue earned", this sounds like .... actual money being taxed (so a Corporate tax?) because it talks about revenue and earnings. But the preceding sentence talks about how the tithe "takes the form of a percentage of all the goods Necromunda produces"..... which sounds like a tax in kind with some of whatever is being produced being taken as levy.

So, how is this actually done in practise?

And is the "a percentage" literal? as in 1% or is it something indeterminate because GW couldn't be bothered making up the exact valuation.

Well? We don’t know.

What we do know is many Imperial Worlds, particularly Hive Worlds can grow wealthy via exports of finished goods and sometimes raw materials.

But we also need to consider what Tax can mean. Being largely Feudal in organisation, Tax can include goods as well as cash money. A Peasant’s tax might be a percentage of the meat, fur, hide, wool, veg their bit of land produced. The Lord may well pay them Market Value minus the taxation imposed.

So the Peasant would end up with some brass in pocket, but a lesser amount compared to taking all their goods to market. The bargain there being should any Raiders/Buttholes come trying to steal their goodies, the Lord would commit their Men At Arms to give said Raiders/Buttholes the sort of kicking you don’t come back from.

the-gentleman-ranker wrote:
So i'm flicking through the 2018 rulebook, and it states below

"Helmawr's main obligation to the Imperium is to provide a tithe which takes the form of a percentage of all the goods Necromunda produces. As the entire production capacity of the world is given over to providing manufactured goods for the never-ending demands of Mankind, the tithe is taken as a straight discount on the revenue earned."


So based upon the last sentence,"the tithe is taken as a straight discount on the revenue earned", this sounds like .... actual money being taxed (so a Corporate tax?) because it talks about revenue and earnings. But the preceding sentence talks about how the tithe "takes the form of a percentage of all the goods Necromunda produces"..... which sounds like a tax in kind with some of whatever is being produced being taken as levy.

So, how is this actually done in practise?

And is the "a percentage" literal? as in 1% or is it something indeterminate because GW couldn't be bothered making up the exact valuation.

I took these statements to mean the Imperium demands a tithe in goods but purchases more above and beyond. So Imperium may demand 2 trillion lasguns but actually only pay for 1 trillion, with the other 1 trillion being the tithe and therefore owed by Necromunda.

I expect the imperium wants both, ready made goods that are produced on necromunda and currency. I think there are several currencies in play across the imperium and just receiving goods wouldn’t be much use if there was a sudden need for something that could be procured.

The tithe is more like a protection racket and the imperium can take it in any form it wants including people.

The imperium convinces governors that if the run the place well and pay their tithe the imperium will reward them with autonomy to be their own little empire but the truth is the imperium does want to micro manage every system. It just wants the war effort to be funded.

mrFickle wrote:
I expect the imperium wants both, ready made goods that are produced on necromunda and currency. I think there are several currencies in play across the imperium and just receiving goods wouldn’t be much use if there was a sudden need for something that could be procured.

The tithe is more like a protection racket and the imperium can take it in any form it wants including people.

The imperium convinces governors that if the run the place well and pay their tithe the imperium will reward them with autonomy to be their own little empire but the truth is the imperium does want to micro manage every system. It just wants the war effort to be funded.

Actually I think at the Imperium level, commodities and goods (manpower included) are the main form of transaction rather than currency even though we know there to be planetary and sector currencies. With the vagaries of warp travel, currencies could fluctuate, whereas goods have a stable value. A ton of grain can feed the same number of people simply due to biology whether the ship arrives on time or 10 years late.

Feudal rents weren't just monetary. There were plenty of rents that were demands for goods.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Feudal rents weren't just monetary. There were plenty of rents that were demands for goods.

In fact most fuedal rents were "in kind". At least prior to the start of the early modern period. (Switching to a primarily currency based rents system is actually one of the things that contributed to the death of fuedalism as a system.)

But in a system like the imperium you can have both. So why not

Iracundus wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
I expect the imperium wants both, ready made goods that are produced on necromunda and currency. I think there are several currencies in play across the imperium and just receiving goods wouldn’t be much use if there was a sudden need for something that could be procured.

The tithe is more like a protection racket and the imperium can take it in any form it wants including people.

The imperium convinces governors that if the run the place well and pay their tithe the imperium will reward them with autonomy to be their own little empire but the truth is the imperium does want to micro manage every system. It just wants the war effort to be funded.

Actually I think at the Imperium level, commodities and goods (manpower included) are the main form of transaction rather than currency even though we know there to be planetary and sector currencies. With the vagaries of warp travel, currencies could fluctuate, whereas goods have a stable value. A ton of grain can feed the same number of people simply due to biology whether the ship arrives on time or 10 years late.

There's also at least an economically significant, and especially symbollically significant amount of inter-systems commerce that's mainly reputation-/favours-/pact-based; among those are various dealings between the Adeptus Mechanicus and other imperial Insitutions, almost everything the Adeptus Astartes does (they occasionally barter for stuff, but their main currency is their military might, religious importance and the fact that having Astartes I.O.U.s in your pocket is politically expedient), "legacy" contracts between the navigator houses and the wider Imperium, and lots besides that. All of these can involve additional, more real-world-economics-y factors, but there are probably at least some examples going by reputation and favours alone. On the other hand, there's stuff like whole pirate empires, black markets and inter-species mercenary bands that imply at least some sort of intergalactic, fungible ressource (or a couple thereof). For the Imperium (and Necromunda), archeotech is one of the things that gets mentioned often and is so ridiculously valuable that you can pin almost arbitrary numbers to it.