Hearth and Hamlet Taxes: Tax Rates, Gold Income & Costs
Hearth and Hamlet taxes trade happiness for Gold income. Learn the Low, Medium and High tax rates, foreign taxes, Tithes, and when to raise taxes.
Hearth and Hamlet taxes are settlement-wide rules that buy Gold by spending happiness. The Keep offers three sliding tax rates, the Church adds a Tithe, and a fourth group — foreign taxes — exists as a penalty rather than a source of income. Every tax on this page is later-game data from build 0.80, so treat the exact percentages as provisional rather than final launch balance.
The short answer
- Taxes trade happiness for Gold: the higher the rate, the more Gold per citizen and the bigger the morale hit
- Keep rates: Low −20%, Medium −40%, High −60% happiness
- Returns: Low 1 Gold/10 pop, Medium 1 Gold/6 pop, High 1 Gold/4 pop (per second)
- Church Tithes: −15% happiness for 1 Gold per 10 pop per second
- Foreign taxes are penalties, not income — they cut production and happiness together
- All tax policies are build 0.80 later-game data; only Soup Kitchen is demo-enabled
How taxes convert happiness into Gold
Taxes are the clearest expression of the game’s core exchange: morale is an economic input. The official Steam description lists “taxation rules to boost income” among the policy levers, but in practice a tax does not create Gold from nothing — it reallocates happiness toward the treasury. Read a tax as two numbers pulling in opposite directions: the Gold it returns per citizen, and the happiness it removes from the multiplier that boosts your production. That is why raising a tax can feel like an immediate win while quietly slowing every resource line in the kingdom.
The three Keep tax rates compared
The Keep offers three rates on a clean sliding scale, all returning Gold once per second while subtracting a fixed share of happiness. Low Taxes costs 20% happiness and returns 1 Gold per 10 population. Medium Taxes costs 40% and returns 1 Gold per 6 population. High Taxes costs 60% and returns 1 Gold per 4 population.
The exchange gets worse per point of happiness as you climb. High Taxes returns two and a half times the Gold per citizen that Low Taxes does, because one Gold per four people is 2.5× the share of one Gold per ten people — but it charges triple the happiness. Whether that is a good deal depends entirely on whether your happiness can absorb a 60% cut without collapsing the production bonus that your whole economy runs on.
| Tax | Happiness cost | Gold per second | Population per 1 Gold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low Taxes | −20% | 1 per 10 pop | 10 |
| Medium Taxes | −40% | 1 per 6 pop | 6 |
| High Taxes | −60% | 1 per 4 pop | 4 |
Each Keep tax tier also carries a flat Gold upkeep of 1 per second on top of the rate itself. That means a small settlement pays a larger share of its gross income to the treasury before the tax is worth anything, while a large population barely notices the upkeep against a population-scaled return. See how the happiness multiplier turns this into a production decision, and how workers supply the output that taxes ultimately skim.
Tithes: the Church’s quieter tax
The Church offers its own income policy in the form of Tithes. It costs less happiness than any Keep tier — 15% — and returns 1 Gold per 10 population per second, the same return as Low Taxes at a smaller morale penalty. It is unlocked through the Tithes option in the Church rather than through the Keep.
Tithes sits between the Keep tiers in spirit: it undercuts Low Taxes on happiness while matching its Gold rate, but it occupies a Church policy slot instead of a Keep one. Because policies are grouped by building rather than mutually exclusive, the real question is which combination of Church and Keep rules your happiness can carry at once. A settlement that runs Tithes and skips the Keep rates gets the income at a much gentler morale cost, at the price of spending a Church slot.
Foreign taxes: a penalty, not income
The fourth tax group is different in kind. Where the Keep and Church taxes generate Gold, foreign taxes exist to punish — they subtract from all production and happiness at the same time. The build 0.80 data lists three foreign-tax tiers: Unjust Foreign Tax at −10% production and −10% happiness, Outrageous Foreign Tax at −15% and −15%, and Unacceptable Foreign Tax at −20% and −20% (which appears twice in the data).
These are story-driven rather than chosen. A demo playthrough shows the mechanic in action: soldiers from the settlement’s old home of Ashencraft arrive demanding payment, and the kingdom receives the Unjust Foreign Tax penalty until the demand is settled. That framing explains why the group sits under taxes in the data while behaving like a temporary negative modifier instead of a policy you toggle. If a foreign-tax penalty appears on your screen, it is a demand to meet, not a lever to pull.
When to raise or lower taxes
Raise a tax only when happiness is comfortably positive and your Gold has an immediate job — a building, research pick, or quest payment waiting on funds. If Food is falling, storage is capped, or a raid is approaching, the production loss from the happiness cut usually outweighs the extra Gold. Lower or skip taxes during expansion, because growth spending already stretches Food and labour without adding a morale drain.
The safe pattern mirrors the worker allocation cycle: change one tax tier, then watch the production trend before touching anything else. A tax that looks profitable on paper can stall the settlement when a −60% happiness cut lands on top of starvation or a foreign-tax penalty. For the wider picture of how morale feeds back into output, read the policies and happiness references.
Demo vs. full game
None of the tax policies are available in Demo v1.0.46. Only Soup Kitchen is marked as build-enabled, so the demo contains no working tax system — every tax percentage above comes from the later build 0.80 data package. Treat the rates, upkeep, and foreign-tax tiers as to be confirmed against the current release build. Mechanics explains how that build 0.80 data set was recovered and why it is not a promise about current balance.
Frequently asked questions
How do taxes work in Hearth and Hamlet? Taxes exchange happiness for Gold income. Higher rates return more Gold per citizen while subtracting more happiness from your production multiplier.
What are the three tax rates? Low Taxes (−20% happiness, 1 Gold per 10 pop/sec), Medium Taxes (−40%, 1 Gold per 6 pop/sec), and High Taxes (−60%, 1 Gold per 4 pop/sec).
Are taxes available in the demo? No. Only Soup Kitchen is demo-enabled; all tax policies are later-game build 0.80 data.
What is the difference between Keep taxes and foreign taxes? Keep taxes (and Church Tithes) generate Gold. Foreign taxes are story penalties that cut production and happiness until a demand is met.
Does raising taxes slow my production? Usually, yes — the happiness cut reduces the global production bonus, so the extra Gold can be offset by lower output everywhere.
For the full policy list that taxes sit inside, read policies, and start with the beginner guide if you are new to the game’s economy.
Sources: Steam store page · Steam announcements · Official policies, taxes & happiness page · Hearth and Hamlet Wiki — policies