To collect taxes, you need a tax office, which in turn requires an Administrative City. The tax office also needs to be supplied with wood in earlier times, or paper if paper is available. Wood and paper is consumed at the rate of 1 load every 6 months for each tax office.
Houses pay taxes at the end of each month if they have "tax office access" at that time. Tax office access means the house was passed by a tax official within the last three months, and is shown graphically by the hight of the column in the "see tax income" overlay.
Taxes are determined by the tax rate you set, the "tax rate multiplier" (TRM) of the houses and the number of people in each house. Taxes collected are not affected by difficulty level. The tax rates are: For example, suppose you have 20 full Spacious Dwellings (20 * 41 = 820 people), 10 full Elegant Dwellings (10 * 52 = 520 people) and 4 full Lavish Siheyuans (4 * 10 = 40 people). That is (820 + 520) 1340 people with a TRM of 1 and 40 people with a TRM of 18. With the tax rate set to Normal (9%), total taxes each month from the common houses will be: If you go to the goverment detailed report, it will show total taxes paid this year (i.e. since February). The number in that report matches the number calculated using the method I have just described. When you right-click on a house, it will tell you how much it claims to have paid in taxes this year. I'm not sure how this number is calculated, but it appears to be a little too high. Also, it is not the same for all houses of the same type (even if they have had tax office access for the same number of months). And if you add up the numbers for all the houses in your city, the total does not equal the total taxes paid shown in the goverment detailed report. To find out which is correct, I checked the amount by which the treasury changed at the end of the month. It appears that the government detailed report (and the calculation I described above) are correct and the information in the right-click window is incorrect. The government tab in the control panel gives you an estimated tax yield for the year. This also appears to be incorrect. I have no idea how it is calculated, but it appears to be far too low at the beginning of each year even with a stable population), and rises to almost the right number by the end of the year.
The tax rate multipliers (TRMs) are:
To calculate the taxes due in a given month, add up the number of people living in houses (with tax office access) with each tax rate multiplier. Then for each TRM, multiply the population by the tax rate and by the TRM. Round down to a whole number and add the results for each TRM.
1340 * 9% * 1 = 120.6 which is rounded down to 120.
total taxes from the elite houses is:
40 * 9% * 18 = 64.8 which is rounded down to 64.
Total taxes for the month are 120 + 64 = 184.