Mobility Era. Play your taxes!

The main objective of the “Mobility Era. Play your taxes!” game is to raise awareness about the important role of taxes in our life and to generate a positive attitude towards taxes by playing a new tax game.

The aim of the game is to accumulate Happy Points (HaPs). Every player needs at least one Health Point (HeP) to survive. The player who reaches the Finish first receives three extra HaPs and ends the game. The one with the highest number of HaPs wins! The game has four sides (blue, red, green and yellow), representing the four cardinal points (North, East, South, West). They correspond to four phases in life: youth, midlife, maturity and old age. Every square on the board shows how old you are. The game starts at age 11 and ends at age 99. As you move on the board, you work in different countries and earn European Currency Units (ECUs). Later, you will have to pay taxes on the ECUs that you earned. The game is also equipped with a map.

Steps of the game:

1) The player rolls the dice and moves by squares on the board by counting the numbers on the dice. 2) If the player lands on a Country Square, it means s/he works in that country. The player picks the corresponding Country Card and keeps it until the end of the game. On the card, the player sees the name and the flag of the country. The card also shows how much gross income the player receives now and how much tax s/he will pay later. Income is what is earned by working in a country, taxes is what is paid back to the Public Budget.

3) The player collects gross income from the Public Budget. If the player can name the capital and the language, or can indicate the location of the country on the map, then s/he can win 1 HaP.

4) If the Country Card is already taken, the player is not entitled to receive income anymore, but can still win 1 HaP by challenging its owner. The player who comes closer to the correct answer on a question about that country wins 1 HaP (e.g. area of the country, year of accession to the EU).

5) If the player is in a Life Card square, s/he reads the Life Card and places it underneath the pile when done. The Life Cards show life situations, such as unemployment, childcare, marriage/divorce, road tax, carbon tax, etc.

6) If the player is in a Tax Office square: it is the end of the fiscal year and it is time to pay your taxes! The player calculates how much needs to be returned to the Public Budget from the tax rates indicated on the Country Card. Every corner of the game is a Tax Office.

7) Other Tax-related squares: Tax Fraud (“Public Budget records show that you have earned much more than you declared. Count all your income and pay 50%. We do not take Tax Fraud lightly!”; Tax Haven (“It was found that a part of your wealth was parked in a tax haven on Cayman Islands. Go back to the last Tax Office and pay your taxes a second time”), Bribery Case (“Your reputation is badly damaged because you were involved in a large bribery case. You lose 2 HaPs”), Speculation (“It was found that 30 years ago you participated in an illegal speculation swindle. The case is legally prescribed, but you are morally wrecked and lose 4 HaPs”).

8) The game ends when the first player lands on the 'Finish' square. The players stop all transactions and count their ECUs, HePs and HaPs. There are 41 Country Cards referring to 41 countries (28 EU, 4 EEA/EFTA, 5 Candidate Countries and 4 Micro-States) indicating average gross income and average tax rate (see the Country Card on Luxembourg).

The board game has the size 50x70cm.

The game is in English and the Instructions of the game are in: English, French, German, Romanian and Dutch..