Those are good ideas, Dusty.
Taxing players "just because" could add a sense of realism to the server, if nothing else. It's up to whoever Era's NAT is. Another idea is to just raise all the prices of items.
For instance, if the average player wealth is 1000g, and you want it to be 500g, you just multiply all the item prices by 2 (avg player wealth / desired player wealth). Zurkiba taught me this.