Finally, the mistery is solved. More money in treasury = less income. This is really bad.

[Herr_Bert]

After I struggled in the past a lot with seeing my city growing but not my income, (i.e. 2k population city makes same income than 200k population city, even though service building density etc. is roughly the same) I finally found the missing piece:

More money in treasury = less income

It was first reported here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/6qe2um/more_money_in_funds_less_weekly_income/

And it's true. While expenses stay the same, tax income scales somehow with your money in treasury.

I tested it on my 200k population city where I had 37M in treasury but only 10k income, with decreasing tendency. I always wondered why, my city was very efficient, I raised taxes multiple times. I always saw my income go up temporarily but then it decreased again.
But then I burned all my money. And saw that my income was as high as 300k! So I indeed had a very efficient city.

I think this is a very bad behavior. I like to grow my cities big and then I want to optimize, but it always feels that this becomes pointless since my income never really increased permanently. That's why I often lost interest in my big cities because I thought I messed up. When my 200k makes same income as 2k city then there must be something wrong, I thought... But as I saw now, you (the developers) caused this mess.

I am very disappointed about this decision.

I'd really like to have the income as a feedback on how efficient my city is, how well I optimized service buildings, transport etc. But this is all pointless if the income is basically a variable depending money in treasury. This might be good for noobs because this way your income is always positive, and it always feels that your city is doing well, no matter how inefficiently service buildings are used.

 

[Timmysoboy]

Probably more of a function of citizens catching wind of the amount of money in the treasury, so they actively pursue tax evasion, while your services bilge money wherever they can, because why not? The government is sitting on 37M anyway. Who knows, maybe even the mayor is skimming off the top.....

 

[28rommel]

Probably more of a function of citizens catching wind of the amount of money in the treasury, so they actively pursue tax evasion, while your services bilge money wherever they can, because why not? The government is sitting on 37M anyway. Who knows, maybe even the mayor is skimming off the top.....

LOL.
I love this response.

 

[havenost]

Yeah I definitely noticed this also. Where my city of like 20,000 people gave me like a 30K surplus, when my city grew to like 150,000 people it was only getting 3K in surplus despite the fact that I basically used the "Move It" mod to copy the exact lay out of the roads and everything and basically made like 6 identical districts.

I had 95% employment, and basically imported barely only 100 units of stuff only and was only exporting like 300 units of stuff. So the city should of been raking in a ton of money at 12% taxes... but for some reason as the city got larger, and my treasury filled up more the lower and lower the tax revenue became.

 

[havenost]

Bumping this thread. Please remove this mechanic.

I just started playing again after a long break and just noticed its still there.

Was playing and kept noticing my tax revenue kept dropping despite the fact that I basically doubled my city size. Went from plus $35K a month with 48K people with $14 Million in the treasury, to somehow only $10K income a month with 80K people with $37 million in the treasury despite not building anything other than a couple of roads that barely added anything

Used the auto money mod to remove all my money except $100K, and I saw my Residential Taxes and Commercial tax revenue jump from $40K each to basically $90K instantly.