Tax Increase in New Eden

CCP will, at times, let the lore drive changes in the game, or at least pretend to do so.  The local chat blackout in null sec and its indefinite duration was pitched as a Secure Commerce Commission directive to preserve the supplies of “Quantum-Entangled 4-Helium” which are, within the game, said to power the “liquid router network” on which com channels rely.
Now CCP is going the same way with a tax increase.
Last week a CCP posted an in-game news repCCP ort in which CONCORD proposed the establishment of a “New Eden Defense Fund” in order to raise funds for in order to support the resistance to the Triglavian invasion.
This was followed today by a news report that the CONCORD Assembly had passed the resolution to raise taxes, specifically:

Substantially increased tax and broker fees are to be levied on interstellar market transactions by the Secure Commerce Commission, following today’s passage in the CONCORD Assembly of the “New Eden Defense Fund Act YC121” (NEDFA). SCC markets will see base transaction tax increase from 2.00% to 5.00%, while the base brokerage fee will rise from 3.00% to 5.00%.

Because of the Triglavians you will now be paying more in taxes on the items you sell in New Eden.

And you’ll be defending New Eden all the more so now

Over at INN Rhivre wrote a post calling the first post a sign that a tax hike was coming, though she suggested that her conclusion might just be tinfoil.  But it turned out to be anything but.
In New Eden the broker’s fee and transaction tax come out of the seller’s take, so expect seller’s to boost prices to reflect the increased cut CONCORD plans to take.
The transaction tax will hit everybody.  That is the fee collected on every market sale in NPC stations and player owned Upwell structures.  Boosting from a base of 2% to 5% is a big markup.  At least Accounting, the skill you can train to reduce the transaction tax… because of course there is a skill to do that… lowers the rate by percentage.  With the tax change there will also be an update to the Accounting skill.
With each level of Accounting you have trained reduces the tax by 11%, so those of us with Accounting V trained up get a 55% reduction so will see the fee go from 1% to 2.25%.  If you are a seller in New Eden and do not have Accounting V yet, this might be something to invest those free skill points into.
The broker’s fee side of this will hit those trading in NPC stations, so it will be more of a Jita tax.  Player owned Upwell structures set their own broker’s fee. (So far at least.) The primary way that player hubs like the Tranquility Trading Tower Keepstar in Perimeter lures sellers… at least sellers of PLEX and skill injectors… away from Jita is with lower broker’s fees.
Now the Perimeter market will have an even larger advantage over Jita.
The Broker Relations skill, which can reduce the the broker’s fee in NPC stations (but not at player owned structures), is not as generous as the Accounting skill.  Currently the Broker Relations reduces the broker’s fee by .1% per level trained, so that Broker Relations V knocks off .5%. With the proposed change CCP wants to make that a .3% change per level, boosting the reduction with Broker Relations V to 1.5%.
With the broker’s fee going from 3% to 5%, those of us with Broker Relations V will see a drop from 2.5% to 3.5%.  That should pull some additional ISK out of the economy.
(The EVE University Wiki has more on market related skills as they stand before this proposed change)
And pulling ISK out of the economy seems to be the likely goal of CCP.  In the monthly economic report, the transaction tax and broker’s fees are the two largest ISK sinks in New Eden.  Together in June they pulled about 21.5 trillion ISK out of the New Eden economy.

June 2019 – Sinks and Faucets chart

That amount was approximately one third of the total amount removed from the economy in June.
This should make for a couple of interesting monthly economic reports in the coming months.  When the July MER comes out we will see the effect of the local blackout in null sec, which ought to have an impact on NPC bounties, by far the largest ISK faucet.  And, presuming this tax change is implemented soon (it will be live on the test server tomorrow), the August MER ought to see a boost in the amount of ISK removed via these two sinks.
Also of interest will be the breakdown of where broker’s fees end up.  In the June MER, 78% of broker’s fees were collected in NPC stations, thus were taken out of the game, while 22% were collected in player owned Upwell structures and thus stayed in the economy and were simply put into the pockets of the structure owners.
If all else remains equal, that balance should tip more towards the NPC side of the equation.  But if the tax drives people to sell in player owned structures, it could very well move the other way.
All things to keep an eye on in the upcoming reports.
In the mean time, you and I and everybody else will likely soon be paying more for our market transactions.  Whether or not this is part of Hilmar’s “Chaos Era” updates has not been indicated.
Related items:

• CCP Dev Blog – Details on the tax including changes to related skills
• New Eden News – Tax increase proposal
• New Eden News – Tax increase proposal passed
• The Discourse – Video covering the change
• Massively OP – Chaos Era and Market Fees