Official News page 4

FROM THE POSTBAG: CARTEL CUSTOMS AREN'T PICKY

by Hazed

Why people insist on writing to the Fed2 Star when they have questions about economic issues, I don't know. You would think that the Galactic Trading Guild, Inc, or Trumble, Cruikshank & Bone would be far better placed to advice them about the workings of the taxation system, or how customs works, or why exchanges do what they do. Or, failing that, an enquiry to the Galactic Administration just might get a response that isn't written in complete bureaucratic jargon.

But no, they continue to send in these serious questions about complicated matters to us. Now, my newsdroids are great at tracking down celebrity dirt, but economists they ain't!

Luckily, I may not know much about the economy, but I know a gal who does. It's handy being able to get Bella to answer these questions for me, although sometimes getting an actual, definitive answer take a lot of effort, given her propensity for vagueness.

This week's letter asked about the customs duties paid on goods taken into a cartel. "I got curious if the game recognized which cartel a commodity was purchased in, and if it would double-charge us for moving goods about. Turns out, the game IS taxing us for goods that we purchased in a cartel, if we return to that cartel with the same goods."

Ok, so it seems like this player has answered his own question - what does he need us for? Maybe he was actually complaining about this rather than asking a question. Or asking if it was supposed to work this way.

I tracked Bella down to a shady bar on some unnamed asteroid, and bought her one of my trademark pink, frothy drinks. After we had stopped our cocktail monkeys from throwing all the fruit at each other, I showed her the letter. For once, I got a coherent reply almost straight away.

"That is the correct behavior," she told me. "The customs people don't care where the goods originally came from. They tax you if you jump in from an out of cartel link, regardless. Normally, the situation your correspondent describes wouldn't arise in the ordinary course of trading (if it does, the player needs to brush up on how you trade). In this case, curiosity taxed the cat."

So there you have it. Customs will tax whatever is in your hold when you arrive in a cartel, regardless of the origin of the goods. The moral is, don't return to a cartel without having sold the contents of your cargo hold first.

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