Microstory 798: Tax Card

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During the 200-year period of chaos, when the galaxy was being claimed by all sorts of people with enough money to reach new planets, tax rates were unpredictable. If you wanted to leave the homeworld, you had to suffer whatever policies the founder of the planet you chose had decided to impose upon you. When the Astral Military Force was established, however, the planets began to conform to certain principles. As time progressed, it became harder and harder to push laws that were significantly different than competitor worlds, because citizens would simply leave for better lives. Across the next few centuries, competition essentially disappeared, with no world having any real advantage over another. Populations leveled off, and planets began to fall into one of a few classes. The sixteen original colonies became hubs for interstellar trade, and bellwethers for best practice, and though there were generally more people on the surface of the primaries at any one time, their respective permanent populations were not much than any other. Reservations were military installments, but all other worlds—secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary, and constellation class systems—maintained relatively constant populations, with only slight decreases down the spectrum. Soon after the primary worlds adopted a tax program based on mandatory AMF levies, other worlds followed suit. Whereas most nations on the homeworld long ago used some kind of income-based tax bracketing system, the new worlds utilized a flat tax method. All citizens of the galaxy were required to pay one hundred points to the Astral Military Force, so that the organization could regulate interstellar travel, and protect everyone from war travesties. One hundred additional points were allocated to each planet’s global government, while another third was designated for local governments. While earlier tax plans only required payment from working adults, it was decided that every living citizen was attached to three hundred tax points. Parents usually took responsibility for this burden for their children, though there have been cases of abandonment in order to absolve these parents of the obligation. It is not technically illegal if certain procedures are followed. All in all, it wasn’t the most perfect system conceivable, but it seemed to work for the galaxy...until the galaxy fell, and the remaining leaders turned towards a more every world for itself mentality.