Pre-tax profit margin is a more useful indicator

[JumboShrimp]

Pre-tax profit margin is a more useful indicator than after tax profit margin.  Maybe the system should use that instead of after tax profit margin, in following places:
- Player page
- Statistics
- Alliance score calculation

When looking at airlines in the world, I think it is more interesting to see pure player performance, rather than blend of how well the player performs and how badly the government of the HQ mismanages things.

Another side benefit: various one time effects of player going in and out of profitability (causing possible tax refunds) would not muddy the waters.

[LemonButt]

I already put in a bug/feature post on this and sami shot it down.

[Curse]

I like the idea. It's not like tax levels are somehow similar, they range from extremely high to zero.

[LemonButt]

https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,53009.0.html

[JumboShrimp]

https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,53009.0.html

I see Sami moved your thread to the cemetery (archives). 

Well, he is right, profit margin is normally considered to be Net, After Tax Profit margin, and I would not mind seeing that as well.  But for the purpose of ranking players, pre-tax profit margin is just a better indicator.

[LemonButt]

I see Sami moved your thread to the cemetery (archives). 

Well, he is right, profit margin is normally considered to be Net, After Tax Profit margin, and I would not mind seeing that as well.  But for the purpose of ranking players, pre-tax profit margin is just a better indicator.

That was the whole point of the original post.  Thanks to tax rates, we're currently comparing apples and oranges and the profit margin stats are (largely) useless.

[Troxartas86]

Surely how well you manage to avoid paying taxes is part of a player's skill? It's much harder than it used to be but still can be done. I've been careless with it lately but have had some decent returns on occasion since the system changed.

[LemonButt]

Surely how well you manage to avoid paying taxes is part of a player's skill? It's much harder than it used to be but still can be done. I've been careless with it lately but have had some decent returns on occasion since the system changed.

The point is that if you are based in a place like Egypt (I think?) with a 40% tax rate and you have a 20% pre-tax profit, that goes down to 12% post-tax.  If you are in UAE with 0% tax and have a 12% pre-tax profit, it is also 12% post-tax.  In the rankings, they would have the same rank and both be listed as having the same profitability, despite the fact the Egypt airline is far more profitable.

You can argue that both airlines are taking home 12% so they are both equally profitable, but that isn't true.  Let's assume fuel spikes and fuel costs increase 12% of revenue.  The UAE airline is now at 0% profit and the Egypt airline goes to 8% pre-tax and 5.6% post-tax profit.  Thus, you cannot say two airlines with the same net profit margin are equally profitable because the numbers are skewed by differing tax rates, which is why it makes more sense IMO to rank airlines based on pre-tax profit margin versus post-tax, especially since alliance scores are calculated based on these values.

Even if you avoid taxes, it is only short term since any deltas will be made up rather quickly with the weekly taxation.  The only way, to my knowledge, to get a tax return is by incurring huge fees for opening a new base at the end of the year.