Taxes may be collected from the populace every week if you own a fief. In Mount&Blade, taxes accumulate, so you don't have to visit every week, while in Warband, you do not have to visit at all to collect taxes as you automatically receive them with your weekly payments.
Base income
Towns earn the most base taxes, villages and castles earn less.
| Feif type | Base income M&B/WB |
Base income WF&S |
|---|---|---|
| Towns | 2400 | 1000 |
| Castles | 1200 | 250 |
| Villages | 1200 | 500 |
Variables
The prosperity of each fief also affects the amount of taxes they produce. You can raise the prosperity of a town by making sure that its caravans reach their destinations, and by completing quests from its Guild Master. For villages, stop it from being raided, kill bandits if they do invade, build improvements, and get quests from its Village Elder. Also, when repeatedly purchasing imported goods from a town or village, the prosperity will eventually drop due to the lack of these goods, and they will no longer be available until trade has returned them, which can take a rather long time.
Tax efficiency is unaffected by bandits, being raided, or looted. It is a property of how many fiefs you personally own, and the exact scale depends on the Campaign Difficulty level chosen. When the Campaign AI is set to Poor, you can hold 6 fiefs before Tax Inefficiency kicks in, and each fief increases Tax Inefficiency by 3%. When set to Average, you can hold 4 before the effect begins, with each fief increasing by 4%. And with Good Campaign AI, you may only have 2 fiefs before you get 5% inefficiency per fief. The maximum efficiency loss on any difficulty is 65%.
As a result of Tax Inefficiency, it is advisable once a strong economic basis is established (such as with Productive Enterprises) to refuse villages and castles as fiefs (which often cost more than their worth to defend anyway), only accepting towns. However, having towns often requires taking them and having high renown if you do not own your own kingdom.