Exactly-- all those short-sighted villagers want to put policies in place that will make it not worth being a dragon anymore, or push them into being dragons for another country. Then they won't have all the benefits that dragons bring to the table
I have devils write all my wishes for me. I tend to hand my DM two to three pages of "this is what I mean, do not screw me over." Their standard fee is 15,000 GP
I'll cast the Wish/Miracle, I just make sure I'm getting what I want out of it.
Came across a nice little book a while back, Axtara - Banking and Finance. It's about a dragon who decides the best way to build a hoard is to set up a bank and let people just give their money to her for safekeeping. She actually does a good job of looking into what banks are for, though, and selects a recently-established town out on the fringes of civilization where there's a lot of potential for future growth and development, planning to issue loans to help businesses get started and increase the overall wealth of the region. And thus the value of her own hoard, both in terms of the raw money in the vault and the value of the mortgages she holds.
I think winning that argument would require understanding the loophole. How well do you understand it? I freely admit my grasp of it is quite poor. I'd welcome insight from others.
If they work for the fantasy equivalent of the IRS, they probably understand tax law better than the dragon does.
If youre asking how well I understand the dragon's argument, its basically arguing that until the assets are actually sold, their value is theoretical and therefore not taxable. While implying that they cant collect tax from the dragon anyway even if it could be taxed because it is hoarding said unsold assets not currency/gold with a well defined value which is a "thats the dragon's problem not ours" situation.
It also depends where they are some areas of Europe have holdings taxes but no capital gains tax so the dragon would need to pay taxes on the holdings.
Actually I'd find it more likely that a dragon would be the one hiring the players.
A red dragon as a bank owner makes WAY too much sense as a world building inclusion. Doesn't even have to be evil necessarily, just the route through which all coin in the area is eventually going to flow.
The bastard would probably also always get his loans back, dragons are pretty damn good at picking up on lies and tricks, especially red and green ones, so basically they would always be able to pick a good loan, meaning they'd always be making more horde gold off investments. Enough so that the local merchants actually banned the dragon from publishing their books or making their own investments through the stock exchange because whenever it becomes known who the dragon's betting on, everyone else will bet in kind, which kinda just eliminates market forces and competition entirely.
The difference is that the dragon will actually be right more often than not. This would be like if a hedge fund actually worked instead of breaking average or even underperforming literally throwing darts at a board to decide whether to sell or buy.
The Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun games (and possibly Shadowrun in general, idk) have dragons shapeshifted into human form as billionaire CEOs. It's incredibly fitting for all the reasons you mentioned. plus I'd imagine being able to turn into a giant frikken monster can give you an edge in negotiations, even just as an unstated threat.