Finance Index Reporting

Another issue that would be a seemingly minor or non-existent issue to many players, this is actually something that is close to becoming a true limiting factor for me personally.

Corporations all have certain cash 'limits' where, when they are holding more cash than that level, automatically make a payment of $10B to their owner. Say for example I have a Services corp that is sitting on $142B cash with the system 'cap' for corp cash set at $140B (I can't recall the exact limit right now). Next month, the Services corp will make a payment to my country of $10B regardless of any other tax/profit sharing settings that I have set, to get itself back under the cash cap.

That payment isn't applied anywhere on the Finance Index. The money is received and accounted for in the Cash Log, but does not show up in the Finance Index anywhere as income, resulting in a Finance Index score that is lower than it truly should be.

In my personal example, for a country with 75% Tax/0% Profit Share, my Profit & Loss reports:
Taxes paid by Corporations: 997,768.21M
Profit Paid by State Owned Corporations: 0.00M
Income from Dividend: 24,000.00M

The Cash Log for the same month reports:
Taxes by Corporations: 997,768M
Income from Dividend: 24,000M
Automatic Cash Transfers by Corporations: 140,000M

So from the example, 14 state owned corporations were at their cash limit and provided a $10B payment each too the country, which the country received but wasn't documented in the FI. At the same time, note the Income from Dividend, an even $24B that was noted in the Cash Log and in the FI properly. The state owns 24% shares in public corps that also have 0% Profit Share - so in this month 10 of those public corps exceeded the cash limit and distributed payment to owners. That payment was properly applied to the FI, which is the main reason I'm asking for state owned to get the same consideration.

In my personal situation it is the difference between 157.43 FI and 168.55 FI. I'm not asking for payments to be changed, or to make more money or anything like that. The money is being taken in just fine. It just isn't properly accounted for in the Profit & Loss that compiles the Finance Index score.

Again this doesn't matter to most people, but especially with higher Game Level goals, Finance Index becomes a very important and potentially limiting factor, so proper accounting of income and expense really is important. In my case I could make a slight adjustment to gameplay and it would solve the direct issue, but would then add the need for more micromanagement of corps and their cash levels, and frankly I feel that just from the optics of it, the payments should be properly applied to FI like they are for public corps.

The financial index is not changing because countries and enterprises can change the cash level in their corporations at will. They can move cash in or out.
If the cash was a factor, they will then be able to manipulate the financial index.

Moving cash has nothing to do with profit.
Profit most times, results in higher cash.

The profit is of course a factor in the FI.

Same for countries. Moving cash around does not change the finanvial index.
higher income does.

Dividends are part of the income for a country or an enterprise.
Interest too.

There may be a misunderstanding in my meaning. I'm not trying to say or imply that cash manually moved into or out of a corp should impact FI, because absolutely as you pointed out that would make if much much too easy to manipulate.

I'm talking about automatic transfer by the corporation of profits after the corp has hit its cash cap. You can only manually inject corps with cash until they have $120B. Their cash limit for most appears to be $170B, once they hit that point even at 0% profit share they will pay $10B to their owner to get back under the cash cap.

If it is an ECPC that the country has shares in, it is counted as a dividend for FI. If it is a State Owned corp, it does not count as anything for FI. That is what I'm asking to be corrected.

This isn't a suggestion to make it easier to undercut or manipulate the FI. I'm just asking for the automatic profit payment after a corp has many months of reliable profitability and reaches its cash cap, that you can't manipulate it to get to, be properly applied to the FI for state corps like it is for ECPCs that the state has shares in.

Public corporations are separated from the countries where they reside.
They cannot exchange money with the country because it would damage or give an advantage to one shareholder and not to all.
when they make a payment, it is a dividend and all shareholder benefit.
Dividend is an income for the shareholders.
Income has an impact on the financial index.

A public corporation cannot receive cash donations.
It can issue shares to raise cash.

In state corporations the situation is very different.
the corporations are part of the country assets.
The country can decide to add cash to keep them alive.

To manage cash in these corporations, we introduced a "Max cash" number and the corporations transfer some cash to the country if the cash level is higher.

This is not a dividend. It is just moving money from one pocket to the other.
State corporations and their country owner are considered one financial entity.

If the transfers will be considered income, then giving money to the corporations will be considered loss.

Taxes and contributions depend on the success of the corporations and are considered income.
When they move cash reserves to the country or the country moves cash to them to raise cash levels, it is not income or loss.

The automation of the cash payments by the corporations when levels are high, are done to reduce clicking and prevent ridiculous levels of cash in corporations.

Also loans are not considered income or loss.

You can however increase taxes and more cash will be paid by the corporations and influence the FI.
You do reduce the profitability of your corporations and their market value will decline.

I get what you're saying to a degree, I hope you get what I'm saying to the same degree. It seems that we both want honest true accounting in the profit and loss and simply have different opinions on what can/can't be taken advantage of, which is perfectly fine and understandable. The 'problem' if you can call it that that I present is absolutely easily worked around like you said it just means a little more micromanaging. So I'm not going to push you anymore on the subject. Thank you for trying to go into extra detail in presenting your points just like I was. I honestly think that even though you didn't budge this was one of our more productive game mechanics discussions.

I agree.
You presented clearly.
I will response in the same way and try to do it quickly.

The game states: The financial index is a measure of how good a country's finance is. It will be high if the country's income is higher than it's expenses

Assuming following scenario: All corps in a country are owned by state.

Tax/Profit Transter

a) 75/100
b) 75/0
c) 0/100
d) 0/0

For all of the above country's finance should be the same.

As I understand Unsthable is saying it is not so for the reasons he stated.

The hypothesis is then, for example, case a) should have the highest impact on Financial Index as profits from corps are taken from them in form of tax/profit transfer. Case d) is then with the least impact because profit from corps are transfered when cash reaches a cap.

Andy wrote: To manage cash in these corporations, we introduced a "Max cash" number and the corporations transfer some cash to the country if the cash level is higher.

This is not a dividend. It is just moving money from one pocket to the other.
State corporations and their country owner are considered one financial entity.

If the transfers will be considered income, then giving money to the corporations will be considered loss.

Perhaps it should be a dividend or rather on what ground are we taking cash from a corp we cannot transfer any cash to.

All things considered. It does not matter what mechanism an entity uses, its a zero-sum system, to transfer values from one place to another as long as such places belong to the entity. This is what I understand is in question here.

Close to what I was trying to hit on but not entirely. I'll try to break down what I was bringing up using your tax/profit transfer benchmarks.

Assume a gross profit of 2B for corp x (state owned):
75/100 - Taxes paid by corporations (1.5B) / Profit paid by State owned corp (0.5B) / Corp profit retained (0)

75/0 - Taxes paid by corporations (1.5B) / Profit paid by State owned corp (0) / Corp profit retained (0.5B)

0/100 - Taxes paid by corporations (0) / Profit paid by State owned corp (2.0B) / Corp profit retained (0)

0/0 - Taxes paid by corporations (0) / Profit paid by State owned corp (0) / Corp profit retained (2.0B)

State owned corps can't have cash manually removed, but they can have cash added up to a total of 120B on hand. Each corp also has a limit on the amount of cash they can actually have, the standard is I believe 160B give or take 10B. When its cash goes above that point, a 10B payout to the owner (the state in this case) is automatically triggered. That payout is not reflected in the Finance Index if the corp is a state owned. If the corp is public however and the country has shares in it, like in the case of my country's public corps where it owns 24% of the shares, when the 10B payment from those are triggered when they reach the cash cap, the state receives 24% of the payment (2.4B) and that IS applied to the Finance Index as a dividend payment.

Because of that, my public corps maintain 0% profit share so that I don't have to worry about their cash total as much in periods of surplus where the products aren't selling well or say have an extreme shortage supply that it can't get. Since their payments are applied to the FI, I was hoping to convince Andy that the state owned should be as well because they operate under the same circumstance with the only real difference being that cash can be infused into the state corps if they need it (though still a fair amount short of the cash cap to reduce the ability to use those cash infusions to manipulate FI since the corp still needs to be profitable for many months before it will reach the cap).