IFA Tax Rule

[Knucklehead254]

Oh, I get it.

But wasn’t it always the point of IFAs that teams with huge amounts of excess cash battled each other for the players? Like, a “this is the moment you cash in all your bonus money” type moment?

I’m cool with some kind of maximum if that’s what people want.

If I’m understanding what happened correctly I don’t believe he had the cash when those offers were made so he was deep in the red all year, so he wasn’t able to offer extensions or sign FAs. But then just before this FA his owner gave him like $40M to go back into the positives meaning any team could just offer a bunch of IFAs and not really get punished for being in the red.

If I’m off please feel free to correct me.

[CTBrewCrew]

Signing IFA removes a draft pick or something? Dunno just a thought

[Patrick M]

I feel like in older versions you were only able to spend the amount you allocated during the off-season to IFA budget. If you didn’t spend it, you got the money back as available funds. But you couldn’t spend more than your original allocation.

Is that turned off? Did it go away? Did I dream that OOTP version?

[aaronweiner]

I see what you mean, but I imagine it crashed his ability to do anything in season. Did he earn the money back in season or was he just granted it? Is this common or a one time thing? Was he able to exceed his budget?

[RonCo]

From the league report:

"Nashville Bluebirds: Received $48,618,142 in cash from the owner."

So he was just granted it.

The issue is just that. I'm all for people spending whatever they want. But when they know the owner will recompense them, the only downside is that it can keep a team from offering extensions. That's difficult, of course, but -- for example -- my own team right now has only one extension needed for next year. If I go ahead and do it now, I can essentially take over the IFA class for free because the owner will bail me out to start next off season.

It seems to me that the only reasonable side-discussion to this is "will all owners do that?" And in the limited sample size of the BBA I think we've seen at least three events (counting this one), and that it's always happened that the owner has fixed them.

Maybe I'm wrong there. But that's how I recall it.

[Dington]

I see what you mean, but I imagine it crashed his ability to do anything in season. Did he earn the money back in season or was he just granted it? Is this common or a one time thing? Was he able to exceed his budget?

It hamstrung me for the season. I earned $159M in revenue, but had $235M in expenses due to the $102M in IFA. Owner still gave me $48M at end of season to help offset the deficit.

[Trebro]

I have also stated privately to others that I think this needs addressed. The trouble is HOW because the game is already balky on financial matters (even though it is a financial sim in almost all ways) and it's going to make more work for Matt.

I do not want anything retroactive. Full stop.
I also think we need an answer before IFA opens or this could get ugly.

Since we can see easily how much is spent perhaps a warning that over X dollars (maybe 25 million) any amount provided back to you by the owner at season end comes out of bonus cash reserves? that way it's not too onerous for Matt and co and there are already penalties for not having bonus vash available? And yes, you could go all in but then there's baked in costs that matter enough without turning this into a full time police job?

[RonCo]

Actually, thinking about it, Nashville's spend suggests the code isn't checking your spend against budget/cash at all. Which I kinda recall from before, and seems like a major bug, too...but I dunno. Maybe that's what happened in the Rockville/Brooklyn days, too. Maybe I'm wrong there, though. I have a hard time seeing the code thinking a $102M expenditure when your budget + cash is maybe $160M or $170M is acceptable.

Now I gotta go do more research.

[RonCo]

Actually, thinking about it, Nashville's spend suggests the code isn't checking your spend against budget/cash at all. Which I kinda recall from before, and seems like a major bug, too...but I dunno. Maybe that's what happened in the Rockville/Brooklyn days, too. Maybe I'm wrong there, though. I have a hard time seeing the code thinking a $102M expenditure when your budget + cash is maybe $160M or $170M is acceptable.

Now I gotta go do more research.

No...I'm pretty sure the code at least used to check the budget. But as I recall when I first started looking at the Nashville thing this last month or so I went in and proved I could offer anything past my budget to IFA. So I think that's an actual new bug.

[aaronweiner]

Actually, thinking about it, Nashville's spend suggests the code isn't checking your spend against budget/cash at all. Which I kinda recall from before, and seems like a major bug, too...but I dunno. Maybe that's what happened in the Rockville/Brooklyn days, too. Maybe I'm wrong there, though. I have a hard time seeing the code thinking a $102M expenditure when your budget + cash is maybe $160M or $170M is acceptable.

Now I gotta go do more research.

If you consider the timing of IFAs this makes perfect sense if the system is literal instead of inferential. At that point you haven't spent any money on your actual team and only have money allocated for that expenditure. So as long as you don't go over your team budget in IFA it might simply allow any amount of money up to the budget amount.

This should not be an exploitable loophole and yes, putting some kind of cap on IFAs seems warranted. If the game is going to allow this sort of thing and it's not easily preventable, the logical answer is to fine them into submission, some kind of dollar-for-dollar match over a certain spending limit - with an automatic ejection from the league for repeat offenders. Or to do away with IFAs altogether - they're kinda lame anyway.

But zero retroactive effect, unless the effect you want is barring Nashville from bidding on IFAs for some set amount of time.

[BaseClogger]

The rules should basically prevent Nashville from signing anybody this year. I spent double the budget in 2054 and for 2055 I couldn't offer any single prospect more than like $250K.

[Trebro]

The rules should basically prevent Nashville from signing anybody this year. I spent double the budget in 2054 and for 2055 I couldn't offer any single prospect more than like $250K.

But that wouldn't stop the exploit. It would just make it a bi annual exploit.

[BaseClogger]

The rules should basically prevent Nashville from signing anybody this year. I spent double the budget in 2054 and for 2055 I couldn't offer any single prospect more than like $250K.

But that wouldn't stop the exploit. It would just make it a bi annual exploit.

I agree was responding to this:

But zero retroactive effect, unless the effect you want is barring Nashville from bidding on IFAs for some set amount of time.

[aaronweiner]

The rules should basically prevent Nashville from signing anybody this year. I spent double the budget in 2054 and for 2055 I couldn't offer any single prospect more than like $250K.

Right. Which is why I didn't say "this year."

I don't even know that we should do that, since usually Matt's rule is "whatever the game allows goes," which I consider to be fair play as well. If anyone could have done it, then the only thing we're complaining about is that the Bluebirds thought of it first.

It just shouldn't ever happen again.

[pandan]

Why not shift to a hard cap instead to avoid the penalty issue?

[Trebro]

Why not shift to a hard cap instead to avoid the penalty issue?

The problem with that is it takes away another way to build up your team differently from your peers. so the paths to create a successful team would shrink again. It's the quick and dirty answer and may ultimately be what the board decides. and my only strong feeling is "fix it somehow" so if they do, even if it's temporary, so be it. But I'd hate to see us lose another option and really boil it down to three true outcomes as it were (draft, trade, sign off-season FA).

[pandan]

Why not shift to a hard cap instead to avoid the penalty issue?

The problem with that is it takes away another way to build up your team differently from your peers. so the paths to create a successful team would shrink again. It's the quick and dirty answer and may ultimately be what the board decides. and my only strong feeling is "fix it somehow" so if they do, even if it's temporary, so be it. But I'd hate to see us lose another option and really boil it down to three true outcomes as it were (draft, trade, sign off-season FA).

I get what you mean -- you limit the risk/reward element of spending a ton of money on a particular class, but I disagree that it removes another talent source.

Putting a cap evens the playing field in IFA (poorer teams can't shell out as much cash for premier talent) and mitigates impact of generous owners giving cash. The tricky part is figuring out the right cap given the player demands and available cash for teams.

[aaronweiner]

Why not shift to a hard cap instead to avoid the penalty issue?

It's not that simple either. The bigger issue raised here is the budget issue, and teams exceeding their budgets to sign IFAs. We could have a cap on it and still have people exceeding their budgets to sign IFAs.

That's why it's really:

a) Cap at max budget somehow
b) Fine
c) No IFAs.

It's probably also a fixable bug, in which case maybe they fix it.

[RonCo]

Yes. Actually, I go drop a note in the beta area to see if it can be fixed soon. That would help.

[pandan]

Why not shift to a hard cap instead to avoid the penalty issue?

It's not that simple either. The bigger issue raised here is the budget issue, and teams exceeding their budgets to sign IFAs. We could have a cap on it and still have people exceeding their budgets to sign IFAs.

Pardon my ignorance, but couldn't we stop individuals from exceeding our budget by mandating a non-zero budget (ie the blank check) in the off-season? Unsure if you mean budget as in overall team budget or the designated IFA budget.