Money

You start with $0. The bag you steal in the walkthrough holds your first $250. F1 shows your cash and bank for 8 seconds.

Cash and the bank

Every counter wants the price in cash: shops, dealerships, the mod shop, pumps, houses, the impound lot and tickets.
The tax on top comes from your cash first, then your bank. If the two together can’t cover the price and the tax, the purchase is refused and you’re told the full amount.
Your bank can’t be taken from you. Cash can: a hospital bill, a stick-up, a drop at a robbery.

	Where	What you can do
ATM	Any cash machine. Walk up and press `E`	Deposit and withdraw
Bank counter	`Y` at any of the eight banks: Pacific Standard, the six Fleecas, Blaine County Savings in Paleto Bay	Deposit, withdraw, send money to a player who is online (by name or ID), and see your last six transactions

Amounts are whole dollars, you must be on foot, and you have to stay within 6 m (20 ft) of where you opened the menu. You can’t use an ATM you’re robbing, and you can’t send money to yourself.

Getting paid

Cash in hand. Every civilian job and every crime pays the moment it’s done: tow calls, repo, trucking, the pimp, fishing, racing, robberies.
The weekly paycheck. Police, medic and fire work goes into a paycheck instead. It’s paid in cash when the game week turns (a game minute is 2 real seconds, so a game week is about 5 and a half real hours), or when you next log in if you were away.

The paycheck has income tax taken off it:

Part of one paycheck	Income tax
The first $10,000	none
$10,000 to $30,000	8%
$30,000 to $75,000	15%
Over $75,000	22%

A $20,000 paycheck pays $800, a $50,000 one $4,600, and a week with nothing earned costs nothing. Money that came out of a business safe was already taxed 6% when it left the safe, so it isn’t taxed again as income.

City wages also follow the treasury: 60% of what you earned when the city is broke, all of it at its $5,000,000 target, up to 110% in surplus. City Hall’s Wages page says why.

At payday chat shows what you earned, the income tax and what you got, and a Maze Bank notification confirms it. When the city paid only part of your wages, a line from City Hall says how much and why. The whole city is told each week: “City Hall: week N closed. Collected $X, paid out $Y. Treasury: $Z.”

Taxes you’ll meet

Tax	Rate	When
Sales tax	6% on top	Shops, dealerships, mod shops, pumps, the car wash, pets
Stamp duty	2% on top	Buying a house
Business tax	6%	Money leaving a business safe: see Businesses
Property tax	by district	About once a real day on each house: see Houses
Income tax	the bands above	Paychecks

What dying costs

A death costs a hospital bill: 2% of your cash, at least $50, at most $1,000, and never more than you have. With $1,000 in cash the bill is $50, with $10,000 it’s $200, and from $50,000 up it’s $1,000. Your bank is never touched. What else a death can take (whatever is in your hands, a worn bag, a hold-up’s cash) and what it never does is on Death and respawn.

Other players can hold you up at gunpoint for 7 to 15% of the cash you carry, never more than $25,000 to $35,000 in one demand. Bank it.

The lottery

Get a ticket. Every 24/7 counter sells them, and they turn up in gloveboxes and strangers’ pockets.
Use it from your pockets and type a number from 0 to 100 in chat. One number each per draw, and each number can only be taken once.
The draw is at 16:00 game time every game day (every 48 real minutes), and only players online at the draw can win. Everybody is told the jackpot at midnight game time, and the result after each draw: the winning number and the winner, or “No winner”.

The jackpot starts at $10,000 and grows $4,000 for every ticket played. It’s paid in cash with 150 XP, and your ticket is spent when you win. Numbers that didn’t win are wiped at every draw, and a server restart sends the jackpot back to $10,000.

City Hall

The Treasury and Wages pages show how the city is doing. Under them, a Collected row for every kind of money the city took this game week and a Spent row for every kind it paid out.

Your record lists your latest payments to and from the city. What left you is red with a minus, what the city paid you is green, and each row’s note says what it was for.
Property tax lists the districts, cheapest first.
Licences sells the fishing licence ($350).
Business leases shows how each business is doing: see Businesses.
Event cashbox is the pot staff run events out of. You can put in $1,000, $5,000, $25,000, $100,000 or $500,000 from your cash.

/taxzone [price] shows the district you’re standing in and what a property at that price would be taxed, and /assets lists everything you own.

Tips

Bank big amounts. Cash is what a hospital bill, a stick-up or a robbery drop takes.
Withdraw before a big purchase: the price has to be cash, only the tax can come from the bank.
Sending money needs the other player online, and a bank counter, not an ATM.
Stay online for the lottery draw: your number doesn’t survive logging out.