A few big names off the top off my head:
- Dirk Montgomery
- Twist
- Talon
- Thor Waldez
- Mercury and the rest of the Draco Foundation
- Sticks
- Rigger-X (I think he was described as ex-MCT in Street Legends)

Remember that the corps control far more than just normal business areas. Ex-military character? Probably served in some corp army (or army corp). Higher education? Corp scholarship or corp university right away

My big thing with the 25 point one is that you aren't from the shadows. You are from a corp enclave somewhere, you know their rules, not the rules of the streets. There will be a HUGE learning curve before you get the corp stink off you and just start to fit in.

Edit- You aren't one of the SINless you are prey. Listen to the song "Common People" by Pulp or the William Shatner version.

I have to admit, I don't really see the big deal about having a corporate SIN...atleast not as its defined in the rulebook. I can see a newly outed Corporate having trouble adjusting to life on the street (see Twist, the kid from Just Compensation, etc), as well as having a hard time with contacts (everyone he knew in the corporate life is pretty dead to him, and how likely is he to really know a fixer?).

The 10% as explained is just silly. I'd personally give the player two options. They can ignore the 10%, but the lack of activity on the SIN and the lack of income would have the SIN deactivated as if it were linked to a dead person (see Bandit from Who Hunts the Hunter). Or if you had a Day Job you could pay the 10% out of that, and ignore it for any illegally gained money.

Or you could pay the 10%. This would come out of the runs you do, and would be fluffed as having to launder money, pay a few deckers, etc to make the SIN look like it was upkept and still viable, so the corp wouldn't deactivate it. There wouldn't be much of a data trail, but it would be enough for you to keep the SIN active, incase you ever needed it (or wanted to go back).

The idea of 10% coming out of everything for no reason is sort of silly. I can understand why they wanted to do that, but the fluff reason is just silly.

Likewise some of the fluffy disadvantages from the book are silly as well. "You're hated because you have a corporate SIN and it got out." "Well. based on the fluff from previous novels and what not, sure, people are going to think I'm a newb, and dislike me for being a corporate (See Piper from Fade to Black for a pretty good example of this) But not everyone is, and as long as I don't kill everyone, I should eventually fit in. And really. How is anyone going to find out? If they do, why don't I just tell them its a fake corporate SIN, and that you'd totally hook up the rest of the gang with one, but the decker doing them died the week before to Black IC."

Think the flaw is meant to be more of a fish out of water, you dont know how things work on the outside since they lived such sheltered lives etc

And that is a fair point. Everything you have read and watched has been sanitized/redacted/biased by the Corp and makes for a bit of culture shock.

The tax part is interesting when you think about it. You are supposedly burned by your Corp, yet you are still paying taxes which implies you still can access some level of corp benefits , even if it's just claiming corp membership.

What the flaw is meant to be is quite obvious in RAW, and it's not just some social awkwardness. What a more sane version might say is another question (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

In terms of the flaw, it gives you 25 more points to play with. You can use some of those points to mitigate some of the stuff, I mean its totally logical for a corp type to have etiquette:streetwise or the like if they were an asset for the mega that worked with 'the street'. The 25 point corper doesn't need to be fish out of water, its just that their information is extensive and readily available to their corp.

Now I imagine something like what happens when you fall out of favor or 'betray' something like Scientology. They'll screw with you, they'll discredit you, they'll sue you, they'll pursue you. They've probably been handling your money, your lifestyle, your connections, etc. Now take that, and make it 100x more intense and possible with the resources of a AAA mega.

You may want to look into who got Capone. If the money can be traced to you as income (and it would, you'd just be laundering it first), you bet your ass the corp tax collectors would be on you for it.

There is, though, a decided lack of mechanical impact given the value of the quality.

Sure, if they can trace it to you, then you can get hammered to it. I don't really have a problem with that. If the player decides to ignore the 10%, then I expect that they're keeping the SIN completely dark. No using it to buy movie tickets, not renting property on it, its just inactive and will eventually get flagged as such.

But the idea that I can do a run using a completely fake SIN (or no SIN) and get paid in certified credit or to the fake SIN, keep it on the fake SIN (or launder it to yet another fake SIN), and it STILL gets tracked back to a corporate SIN which I haven't used in a year, and the only commlink that had the ID on it has been rendered into scrap metal?

And when that fake SIN gets burned, do you lose all the money associated to it? The rule is written (based on Bull's commentary, at least) from the perspective of "damn, that'd way too much paperwork to make people do".

Bringing him up another 52349587234 times won't make the comparison any more fitting. If you desperately need a Mafia analogy, how about this one:
Johnny Torrio, Capone's predecessor, was born in Italy and therefore had an Italian citizenship (in SR terms, a national SIN). After he emigrated to the US, did he still pay taxes to Italy?


...you have a SERIOUS problem. If I know every transaction you made, digitally or not, I'm able to determine every single person you made business with. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive (free cookie if who know who I'm paraphrasing here (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ). Why do you think runners get paid in certified cred and not just give Mr Johnson their bank info?

Ironically Torrio also got picked up for tax evasion years later on by the US government, they caught him while he was getting his Passport picked up from the post office.

It is especially ironic as he had warned the mob boys years before to get their taxes straight or this kind of thing would happen.

But yeah, the whole Tax thing is sort of weird for the quality, given how it makes you out to be pariah with the parent corp, so what benefits are there in paying?

Beyond being chased by the Infernal Revenue Service branch of the Corp if you don't of course.

I believe that the US IRS has a tick box on your tax return for criminal income so that criminals cannot claim that there was no section appropriate for their income... or something. It's been a while since I heard it, and it could just be an urban legend.

Heh, not quite that bad yet.

However in Minnesota they instituted a 'grass' tax for marijuana at one point where you could go in to pay your tax on the maryjane you had, even though this was still illegal to possess.

The best part was the tax office could NOT share those files with the police so the cops could not know who was carrying, but if you did get busted without the tax that was just another charge they could stick to you.

Weird eh?

Yes... For the characters that I play with multiple SIN's, if one gets burned, all things associated with it go away. This includes the money (not much) that I keep associated with that SIN. And yes, it is indeed more paperwork, but it is imminently satisfying, at least to me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I actually do it that way too. It kinda threw me off when people said they did it another way.

Presumably yes?

Admittedly, I'm looking at this from a point of view that isn't necessarily Mission-specific. I can understand in missions if they want to keep it as simple as possible, its just that Bull and Missions have the unfortunate luck to publish clarifications and errata for Missions long before anything gets done on the "Main" side of things. So people see what Bull's posting and assume its going to apply to non-missions play as well (or atleast influence their GMs one way or another).

But if you're going to be using your Corporate SIN (CSIN) as a money dump to keep it safe incase your fake SINs get burned, then yes, I'd expect you to be paying the taxes on it since you're actively using the CSIN and there's no getting around it. If you've got stuff thrown on a fake SIN and it gets burned, I'd expect the things on the fake SIN to go away as well (barring a panicked call to a decker/fixer/retirement broker to try to save as much as possible).

Of course, it all depends on what level of detail your GM goes into with when it comes to handling SINs, fake or otherwise.

Why are the SINs "layered" quality? To me it indicates that the rules regarding them were unfinished when the book went to print.

The taxman, the police, and everyone else wants their cut.

Hmm... a lot of these character concepts shouldn't have corporate SIN... they should have 'records on file' (to borrow the SR4 negative quality). They're ex-corp... the corp knows who they are and unless something special happened has their records on file. But they'd lose the corp SIN when they left the corp.


The reason it should be a huge problem for shadowrunners has been brought up... shadowrunners are deniable assets... exactly what is Ares going to think when you're working for S-K and visiting your local Azzie pyramid and leave something tracing it back to them on the scene! It should be a huge problem... and that is the element that needs played up.


For normal SINs... I disagree... the tax element is pretty stupid. Certified cred is for all intensive purposes as good as cash. The certified credstick is a bearer bond tied to a 'black' account... not registered to anyone in name. If I hand the 20k black credstick from John to Suzy... Suzy is now the owner of the 'bearer bond' and the cash in it. The IRS has no idea she's gotten paid at all. No electronic transfer of funds has occured. A credstick (cash) was simply handed from one person to another.

Again the point is I have a credstick with a pre-paid cash balance on it. Handing the credstick to others doesn't move the money it only moves the key to the money. But what can I say in this day and age... many people don't realize that bearer bonds were the norm for a long time (most securities today are 'registered' securities not 'bearer' ones... if someone stole your bearer bond certificates you were in trouble... as that was commercial paper and almost as bad as having cash stolen).



The problem is that now you need to track 'normal' payments and non-normal payments. Plus of course fake sins if you're running income through them. By that notion... EVERYONE should be paying taxes on their fake id's as well! If the normal SIN is getting socked with tax why isn't money going into a fake one?

I'd have to say this is one of Bull's worse ideas. The quality should come back in other ways.

I always assumed that part of your SIN's lifestyle costs included a fake income (via your friend the money launderer) and taxes on said income.

... And this is why money laundering is a thing.



Then it sounds like it makes for a great house rule, but I would argue it would be terrible as a general rule. I imagine you can see the reasons why I'd consider that to be the case?





How's about this: If the character is no longer using their corp-SIN at all, it has withered and died and they no longer qualify for the quality by the time the game starts. Otherwise, it's a question of whether or not you really want to get into tracking what money and assets are associated to what SIN, which isn't gonna be practical for everyone. If you don't, assume all money is taxed, but if you do more power to you. The point of the rhetorical question was largely to try to get across the idea that many tables wouldn't even be tracking that kind of thing, and forcing that bookkeeping into the system could cause issues at some tables.

1.) It's not and never has been in SR
2.) Shadowrunning is a cash-in-hand job yet the corps are still trace anything you earn and tax it. How exactly are you going to launder money under such an omniscient monitoring?

@...Falcon....er...

Nope, the corp SIN in SR is supposed to be for ex-Corp peope. You were cast out, yet still pay your taxes.

Most definitely... That level of detail is not for everyone. Besides, I really have issues with the 5th Edition version of SINner. I think it was ill thought out, personally. But what else is new, right?

Which is pretty stupid if you have been thrown out... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)