Money & the Budget

A country in Atomic Dawn does not set a tax dial or a defence budget slider. Every revenue and spending rate is the sum of what its laws authorize, applied to the GDP of the provinces it actually holds, and settled once a month. The result moves a single treasury number which, for most countries in 1946, starts deep in the red.

The budget is therefore an outcome of political choices. To raise more money a government has to reform its tax laws; to spend more on the army it has to change its procurement, recruitment or readiness laws; and every one of those reforms costs political capital and time.

Rates come from laws

National law is organized into policy sets, and a country holds exactly one option in each. Many options carry a share of GDP as a tax or spending rate:

A country on the default laws taxes 14% of GDP through Progressive Personal Tax and 8% through Moderate Business Taxation, plus tariffs; its spending lines are built the same way. Reaching any of the ceilings takes deliberate, sustained policy.

How taxes are collected, and why the rate on paper is not what reaches the treasury, is covered in Taxation.

The tax base: GDP actually held

Every rate is a share of the GDP of the provinces the state holds. Anything that lowers that GDP lowers both revenue and spending:

• Unrest, Devastation, war exhaustion and blockades reduce each province's economic output and so its GDP.
• Occupied provinces still produce, but their GDP drops out of the owner's tax base and spending budgets entirely until they are retaken or ceded.
• Autonomous regions keep their share of what they produce.

A wealthy country fighting an unpopular war on its own soil can find its real revenue far below what its laws suggest.

Where the money goes

The Budget screen splits spending into real categories rather than one lump sum.

Military

Military spending is upkeep plus procurement. Only Procurement Spending, set by the Arms Procurement law, buys new arms; conscription, reserves, readiness and the nuclear programme are upkeep and buy what their own policies say.

The Arms Production modifier increases how many arms each dollar buys. See Brigades and Manpower for how arms and recruits become units.

Research

Research spending separates what policy sets aside for science, the upkeep of each research center beyond the free one in the capital, and the cost of active projects. Every extra research center is a standing monthly bill.

Social and infrastructure

Social spending funds health, pensions, schools, housing and welfare, and lowers unrest and raises government support. Infrastructure spending from the Public Works law builds railroads and roads.

Everything else

Each month's other treasury movements are booked as they happen: research project costs, warhead and strategic force production, diplomatic actions and missions, organization and focus costs, faction operations, and treaty payments, transfers and crisis settlements paid or received.

Fiscal flex: budgets that bend

Laws change slowly, so without some give a country's balance would sit still for years and then jump. Instead, a budget law authorizes a tax or programme, and each month the budget funds it at a factor around 100%. The law's whole effect scales with that factor: more money in healthcare buys more of everything healthcare does, and a heavier tax brings more of its side effects.

• In a surplus, discretionary programmes are funded above 100% and some taxes ease.
• In a deficit, programmes are funded below 100% and taxes rise.
• Funding stays between 50% and 150% and moves a quarter of the way towards its target each month, so it never swings wildly.

Laws differ in how readily they flex. Entitlements such as pensions, legal mandates such as labour law, and states such as readiness levels never flex. Salaried services like schools and healthcare flex a little. Arms procurement and construction drives flex the most, so a windfall buys weapons and roads first, and a shortfall cuts them first.

The full rules, including how much of a surplus or deficit is absorbed, are in Debt.

One treasury number

A country has a single treasury figure. It is not a cash balance to manage: a negative treasury simply is the country's debt. Nobody takes out loans, and no purchase, action or payment ever requires money in the bank. What limits spending is its cost to the budget and the politics of paying for it. Debt costs interest, and heavy enough interest costs government support. See Debt.

Reading the Budget screen

The Budget screen shows the itemized revenue and expenditure of the previous month, and its total is exactly the treasury's change over that month.

• Each tax law's line shows its rate on GDP; each source of tax efficiency, including Corruption, shows its share of what the rates collect.
• A funded law shows what it actually received beside what it was authorized.
• A negative treasury is shown with the debt's share of GDP.
• A deficit warning shows last month's shortfall, annualized, as a share of GDP.
• Every line is clickable: a law's line opens the Laws tab on that policy set, research lines open Research, military lines open the Military view, diplomatic and faction costs open their screens, and a payment to or from another country opens that country's Treaties tab. Lines no single choice owns open the Modifiers view on the modifier behind them.

National history

Every country keeps a monthly record going back to the campaign's opening month: treasury, total GDP, population, GDP per capita, education, unrest and every active national effect. Clicking a country statistic opens its history chart and a province-by-province ranking.

Related articles

• Taxation: tax laws, efficiency, corruption and the tax ceiling.
• Debt: debt, interest, deficits and fiscal flex.
• Provincial Economy: where the GDP comes from.
• Policies: how laws are changed.