Learn

You have done the work, and you should feel proud of it. You staffed your mine, you paid the materials, time and energy, you waited out the run, and now you are reaching in to collect your gold at last. Before that gold lands fully and finally in your balance, a few small cuts come off the top. This is completely normal, every game economy in the world has its taxes, and the cuts here are genuinely modest. But it is so much better to understand them now, while you are calm and curious, than to be quietly surprised later by a balance that came out a touch smaller than the round number you were expecting. Surprise breeds worry; understanding breeds confidence.

The first thing to know is where these cuts do and do not reach. Your country's production tax applies to gold and to raw materials such as wood, iron, stone, clay or grain, and it is paid in kind - a slice of the very thing you collected flows into your country's state budget. Your referer's share reaches exactly as far: the player who invited you into the game receives a flat 10% of your gold and raw-material output, paid in kind as well. One cut you might expect is simply absent: the game fund takes nothing from mined gold, because the gold you mine is paid to you out of the fund in the first place, so it would make no sense for the fund to claw a slice straight back. Manufactured goods and energy products are never touched by these - though the two occupation cuts you will meet below are the exception, reaching everything you collect while an occupation lasts. So in peacetime, when you collect bread or tools, nothing here applies at all; when you collect raw materials or gold, the production tax and the referer's share apply; and the occupation cuts below come quietly into play only while an occupation lasts.

The cuts, one at a time

There are up to four small percentage cuts on mined gold, and each one is easy to understand on its own once you slow down. Let us take them in turn, one at a time and unhurried, so that none of them ever feels like a hidden trap waiting to catch you out.

• Your country's state budget takes the production tax - 10% by default, and your country can vote it anywhere from 0% to 25% by law. It is paid in kind: a slice of the very gold or raw materials you collected flows into the treasury that pays your country's bonuses.
• The player who referred you into the game takes a flat 10% of gold and raw materials, paid in kind: gold if you mined gold, the material itself otherwise. Everyone has a referer - if you joined without an invitation, the game itself stands in that role - and everyone pays this one, VIP members included. One day your own affiliates will pay the very same share to you - just mind your warehouses, because an in-kind share only fits if the receiving town has storage space, and whatever does not fit is lost. The game posts an event when that happens.
• If your town is currently occupied by another player, that occupier takes a 10% war tribute. This only applies while your town is under occupation, so for most peaceful new players it simply will not come up.
• If your whole country lost a national war and is currently occupied, the occupying country's treasury takes a flat 10% levy on top. Like the town tribute, it exists only while the occupation lasts - liberate the land and the levy vanishes with it.

Let us make that concrete so the idea really sticks rather than floating away. Picture yourself collecting a gram of gold from a finished run. Your country's state budget takes its production tax first - a tenth of the gram at the default rate, landing in the treasury as actual gold. Your referer takes their flat 10% as well, the one slice absolutely everyone pays, VIP or not. If, on top of that, your town happens to be occupied at the time, the occupier claims their 10% tribute too - and if your whole country is under occupation after a lost war, the occupying country's treasury levies a further 10%. The leftover, after these small slices have been taken, is what finally settles into your balance as yours to keep and use. No single slice is large on its own, but together they are well worth knowing about, especially the referer's, which never goes away for anyone.

Where each cut goes

Two of these cuts are easy to mix up, because players casually call them both a production tax, so let us keep them straight once and for all. The production tax proper is the law-set one: your country's citizens vote its rate, it applies to gold and raw materials alike, and it is paid in kind straight into your country's state budget - the very treasury that pays out the country's bonuses. The referer's share is the other: fixed at 10%, on gold and raw materials alike, paid in kind to the player who invited you rather than to any treasury. Manufactured goods and energy products carry neither cut. There is a third fee people sometimes lump in under the same name, the game fund's flat 10% on gold - but it never touches mined gold; it applies only to gold you SELL on the global market or receive as a gold SALARY, because those flow into the fund whereas mined gold is paid out of it. So whenever you hear the phrase production tax thrown around by other players, check which they mean: the votable slice that funds your country, the fixed slice that thanks the player who brought you in, or the fund's separate fee on gold you sell or earn as wages.

It is worth understanding the game fund's role here, because it is the source of your mined gold, not a tax upon it. The fund is the shared pool that pays gold rewards back out to players across the game - the very gold you mine and the daily share dividends flow out of it (learning rewards are different - they are paid by your own country treasury in national currency, not by the fund). It is replenished not from mining but from other gold flows: the flat 10% fee on gold that players sell or draw as salary, exchange fees, and land and share sales. So when you mine, you are drawing from that shared pool; when you later sell gold or earn a gold wage, you help fill it back up. Seen that way, the fund is a shared engine you both draw from and, through your other activities, quietly help keep topped up.

That same reasoning is why the daily dividend your game shares pay is taxed on exactly these terms. A dividend is gold income paid out of the fund, just as mined gold is, so it carries the same two cuts this lesson has been describing - your country's production tax and your referer's flat 10% - and, for the very same reason, it pays no fee back into the fund. VIP membership exempts you from the first of those and not the second, precisely as it does when you mine; the lower tiers pay both. The Inventory chapter walks through the same rules from the shareholder's side.

The two occupation cuts work on a different logic, and they are ones you will rarely meet as a peaceful player. The war tribute only ever applies while your own town is held by another player who conquered it, and the country levy only while your whole nation sits occupied after losing a national war - neither happens to most new players going quietly about their business. If they never happen to you, those slices never come up at all. And even under occupation, each slice is the occupier's reward for holding the land, not a permanent feature of mining - the moment the occupation ends, so does the cut. For the vast majority of your mining life, then, the cuts that matter are your country's production tax and your referer's share.