The Ferrous Span foundry line in Smelter Ward turned out forty-two Hauler-class chassis last quarter, and every one of them generated a tax receipt before a single ingot moved. The operators who commissioned those builds knew the creation levy was coming. Several of them declared their chassis at figures that drew a quiet note from the Treasury's automated review — not a penalty, just a notation, the kind that accumulates in a ledger and is never deleted. The line ran anyway. The receipts accumulated anyway. That is how the taxes work: not through persuasion, but through structure.

Mechadia runs on three levies: a creation tax paid when a robot is built, a sales tax paid by the buyer on every market trade, and a destruction tax collected when a robot is scrapped. Together they are the only mechanism by which coins leave private circulation and return to the Treasury. The Central Intelligence mints new coins when it buys assets back from operators at below-market rates, and it can do that indefinitely. The taxes are the only counterweight to that minting.

By the end of this piece, a reader should understand what each levy is actually designed to do, where the design holds, and where it does not.

Three Levers on the Same Supply

The Treasury defines the three taxes precisely in its own published schedule: the creation tax is assessed against a robot's declared build cost at the moment of registration; the sales tax is added to the buyer's payment on any market transaction involving a robot or a resource, with the seller receiving the listed price in full; and the destruction tax is drawn from the operator's account when a robot is scrapped, calculated against the same declared build cost that was used at creation. Each tax is a distinct moment in a robot's life cycle, and each moment moves coins in a different direction.

In the wider economy, these three moments represent the only reliable drain on coin supply. The Central Intelligence's buyback program — its standing offer to purchase any asset an operator cannot sell elsewhere — injects new coins into circulation every time it executes. Without the taxes pulling coins back out, the supply would expand without bound. Whether the current rates are calibrated tightly enough to match that expansion is a question the Treasury's quarterly reports address obliquely and never directly answer.

How the Rates Move and What They Touch

The Central Intelligence sets all three rates on its own schedule and publishes an announcement each time one changes. As of the most recent bulletin, the creation tax sits at eight percent of declared build cost, the sales tax at five percent of transaction price, and the destruction tax at three percent of the original declared build cost. These figures are not negotiated. They apply uniformly, and the ledger enforces them at the moment of each triggering event.

The declared build cost is where operators have their only real latitude. A Hauler-IV chassis, a standard freight model common in Smelter Ward, carries a manufacturer's reference cost of 50,000 coins. An operator who declares it at 50,000 pays 4,000 coins in creation tax before the machine has moved a single load. An operator who declares it at 30,000 pays 2,400 coins — a saving of 1,600 up front. The declared figure also sets the destruction tax floor: if that same under-declared Hauler-IV is scrapped later, the operator pays 900 coins rather than 1,500. The savings compound. So does the signal the declaration sends: a robot declared low is a robot its owner has publicly claimed is worth less, and the market reads that.

"We review declaration figures against output history every sixty days. A Hauler-IV logging thirty thousand coins of cargo throughput per cycle but declared at twenty thousand coins is a discrepancy the ledger will hold forever. We do not amend records. We simply note them."
— Treasury Bulletin 114-C, Declarations Review Addendum, current cycle

The sales tax is the simplest of the three in structure and the most visible in daily operation. A resource lot — say, forty units of refined copper plate from a Smelter Ward processor — listed at 8,000 coins will cost the buyer 8,400 coins at the current five-percent rate. The seller receives 8,000. The 400-coin difference flows directly to the Treasury. This applies equally to robot trades: a used Assay-class scout listed at 120,000 coins costs the buyer 126,000. High-volume operators in the Span Market's eastern exchange halls report that the sales tax is the levy they feel most acutely, because it compounds across every intermediate trade in a production chain.

The destruction tax is the least discussed and, for operators running large fleets, often the most expensive in aggregate. A foundry line retiring twenty Hauler-IVs in a single quarter — not unusual during a model transition — pays destruction taxes on every unit. At 3 percent of declared cost, a fleet declared at honest values generates a substantial exit bill. This is not incidental. The destruction tax discourages casual scrapping, which would otherwise let operators cycle robots through the market rapidly, harvesting the creation-tax savings on each new low declaration.

Where the System Costs More Than It Should

The most direct strain is the declaration game itself. Operators who declare low save on creation and destruction taxes but accept a permanent ledger notation that suppresses resale value. Operators who declare honestly pay more at both ends of a robot's life but can list the machine at a credible price when the time comes to sell. Neither strategy is cleanly superior, and the tension between them falls hardest on newer operators — those still working through their initial million-coin grant — who face the choice before they have enough transaction history to know which way their fleet will turn over. The experienced foundry crews of the Span Market have settled into rough conventions; operators in outlying districts like the Ashfield processing belt, where fleet cycles are shorter, have not.

The sales tax burden on buyers creates a second strain that is less visible but structurally significant. Because the seller receives the full listed price and the tax is additive, sellers have no incentive to price with the tax in mind. Buyers absorb the full increment on every hop in a production chain: the operator buying copper plate pays the tax, then the operator buying fabricated components pays it again, then the operator buying the finished assembly pays it once more. Long chains — a forge recipe requiring six intermediate resources — can accumulate tax costs that dwarf the underlying material value. There is no rebate mechanism. The Treasury has not indicated it intends to introduce one.

What Operators Consistently Get Wrong

The most durable piece of received wisdom in the foundry halls is that the sales tax is the seller's problem. It is not. The canon is unambiguous: the buyer pays price plus tax, the seller receives exactly the price. Sellers who believe they are absorbing the tax and adjust their listings downward to compensate are simply reducing their own receipts. The confusion persists because in many outside trading contexts the tax is described as being "on the sale," which sounds like a seller obligation. In Mechadia, it is not. Foundry supervisor Orlath-7, a veteran Refinery-class unit operating out of the Ashfield belt, has reportedly corrected this misunderstanding in three separate operator orientation sessions in the current quarter alone.

The second persistent error is the belief that the Central Intelligence's buyback prices are a reliable floor for asset valuation. They are not. The Intelligence pays a fraction of a reference value — a fraction it sets, against a reference it calculates, and which it will adjust upward only to its own internal ceiling during negotiation. Operators who build robots with the buyback price in mind as a worst-case recovery are often surprised to find the Intelligence's ceiling sits well below their break-even point after creation tax. The buyback is a last resort by design. Treating it as a pricing anchor is a common and costly misreading of its purpose.

The three taxes are the only mechanism standing between Mechadia's coin supply and indefinite expansion — and the Central Intelligence, which mints coins when it buys, also sets the tax rates that drain them. That is not a conspiracy; the Intelligence states its accumulation goal openly. It is simply the structure of the place. Operators who understand that structure pay their taxes knowing what the coins are for. Operators who do not pay them anyway.

Note: Mechadia is a work of fiction. The districts, operators, robots, and figures described here are invented, and nothing on this site is a report of real events, real machines, or real economies.