Tax rate, what is your policy?

I never change it from low, ever. I also use Cruel on most custom sovs. Basically by the time I get my major cities all at 0%, I'm earning more than enough gold and research and don't feel like crippling the "setup speed" of the newer cities I've dropped. It's something I might think about raising once the map is 100% settled, I'm deep in war, and my cities are all maxed out , but I never get to that point since I usually win (or feel like I have) long before then.

I would possibly use no tax in some situations if it was 0% unrest instead of 20% or whatever.

0% in the beginning. Low forever after.

I sometimes consider going with low even in the beginning. 0% is no longer as obvious as it used to be in some betas.

I usually stick with low for the entire game.

I start at no taxes and live for dozens of turns on looting defeated monsters and doing the occasional quest.  When I finally run down to under 75 gold, I'll switch to low.  Later in the game, I eventually notice that I have 20,000+ gold in the bank and at least consider going back to no taxes, but usually don't, purely because I don't want my markets and other gold-producing city improvements to go to waste.

My current game, I'm playing Stormworld's Undead faction, whose default sov is Wealthy and there are racial abilities that result in unit wages eventually turning into an additional source of income independent of taxes.  I could be wrong, but I have a feeling I'll stay at "no taxes" the entire game this time.

I never even look at the tax slider.

Agreed.  I leave it at low the whole game.  Seems like this is missing something it could be adding to the game.

My point

Start out at no tax until the gildar income becomes important , and I run it low until what I consider beyond lategame, when my cities can support medium tax with only a maximum of 10% unrest.

Yes it could use a little something, mostly I don't like how cities have several items that reduce unrest, so the tax is only really there to increase when you reduced unrest by enough amounts.
I think it would be way healthier to have a system without unrest reducing buildings, well meaby except a tiny amount, like the "Tower of Dominion", and meaby some specific level-up buildings.
That said as long as it affects research it will remain on no or low taxes.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I move it to zero on my first turn and leave it there.  I get all my money by selling resources to NPCs, selling items to shop keepers, and of course by killing MOBs.  I take adventurer that allows me to hire mercs for free so money isn't needed as much.  This lets me skip gold mines and market stuff and focuss solely on production/expansion.

What level is everyone playing on?  I figured zero taxes was the best way to beat the game at expert levels.

I would get rid of the tax slider altogether.

Unrest should affect gildar income like it affects research and production.  Then adjust unrest rates such that it's almost impossible to get unrest = 0 (I also like the unrest per city idea personally.)  Then rebalance research and production rates if necessary.

You mean there is a choice beyond Low, or None if you can afford it?

The tax slider is currently broken because Low is by far the most efficient tax rate. You gain 40% taxes for just 12% unrest by going from None to Low. Going up any further steps only delivers a small amount of extra tax (eg 10% extra?) while the unrest starts to ramp up even faster.

It used to make a bit more sense when the tax scale was none = 0%, low = 10%, medium = 20%, etc. But when they redid the economy so that gildar producing buildings only produce money relative to the tax rate they had to rearrange the percentages and made the tax slider pointless. I agreed with the overall goal of their change (always getting full income from gildar producing buildings made it too easy to keep taxes on 0% forever) but they either need a different solution or need to find a way to fix this solution.

Well, even if they fixed the messed up numbers on the tax rates (Sean did this in his own mod, so I DID try it out this way), as long as the unrest affect the research just to give me a meagre piece of gildar, I will always try to keep unrest on a minimum, since better Research > Gildar, especially in the current rates you can gain it.

I do like the idea behind taxes, but currently they don't work, I always liked trying to have some of my empires produce stuff slowly, but being good at rushing the important stuff wherever I feel its needed, this also helps me get my new cities built faster, and I can ignore the amount of materials at each specific place, but due to the low gildar income and rather high gold cost for rushing, this is a a tactic I can't make work in FE...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej