Guild Wars 2

So I’ll say right off that I had a couple economics courses years ago but am definitely not an economist. However, I am good at maths. A few days ago I set out to reverse-engineer the market taxing system so that I could reliably predict my net gains on any margin trading I did. I read on the wiki (and forums) that “there’s a 5% listing fee and 10% sales tax” on all sales. After running some numbers, I believe this is wrong.

My method: Buy a single stack of 1 item, record listing price, record PPU, etc. Sell item, record current wallet balance, record amount received upon completion of sale under “Trade Profits”, withdraw money, confirm that amount received matches “Trade Profits”.

After approximately 50 repetitions of this method (different items, different quantities), I’ve used the following formula to accurately predict net sales within 3c (due, I believe, to rounding differences):
Net Sale = Total Sale – List Price – Sales Tax
where
List Price = 5% of total sale
Sales Tax = 5% of total sale (hidden)
Therefore
Net Sale = 90% of total sale.

As an extra note, sales tax is taken at the time of sale, not when you withdraw money from trade profits. Therefore, WYSIWYG with the trade profits thing.

Can anyone confirm/refute this? I’m happy to be proven wrong even though I’m pretty sure I’m right

Happy trading.

This is basically what I did:
1. pick an item that is selling slightly above 1s. make sure you have nothing else selling on the market.
2. sell if for 1s, you’ll notice that 5c is deducted as listing fee, that is non refundable
3. when someone buys the item, go to the pickup screen, you should be able to see only 90c.

Thus total cost of transaction is 5% listing fee + 10% sales tax on the selling price. So if you want to buy and sell off the market, make sure the spread is more than 15% of your intended selling price to make a profit.

If you sold at 1s (100c) and you received 90c, isn’t that a total 10% tax?

yeah, 10% sales tax. Plus your 5% non refundable listing fee…that comes to a total cost of 15% for every item you sell.