[Jeff]

I disagree that taxes are a "band-aid" because there are other money sinks which work well - namely upgrading equipment and purchasing goods to level up professions. Of course the taxes don't actually go anywhere, which is fine.. But if you really wanted to have some fun with it, a game developer could build a system where tax money is pooled, and lottery tickets are sold. Then maybe once a week, a number is generated and, if someone has that winning ticket, all tickets are deleted from all inventories and the winner is given a percent of that tax pool. The rest of the pool would simply be deleted.

Fun, a little complicated, time consuming to program and unnecessary. But fun.