Buy Tax, Sell Tax, Slippage Mods: Reading a Token's Fee Structure
Fees are where token contracts hide behavior. Reading them well separates projects with a revenue model from machines tuned to punish whoever arrives last.
The vocabulary
- Buy tax: deducted when you buy. Funds marketing wallets, treasuries, or LP.
- Sell tax: deducted when you sell. High sell taxes discourage exits — ask who benefits from you being unable to leave.
- Transfer tax: charged wallet-to-wallet, outside trades. Rare in legit designs.
- Slippage modifiable: the owner can change these numbers at will.
- Personal slippage: taxes set per specific wallet — the precision instrument of targeted traps.
What is normal
Zero to ~5% covers most legitimate models. Between 5–10% demands a written reason. Above 10% you are paying a toll that can rise; combined with modifiability, it is a lever waiting for maximum holder count.
The classic arc
Launch at 0% tax. Grow. Raise sell tax to 30% once enough buyers are committed. Or flip personal slippage to 100% for everyone except the owner's wallets, drain what attempts to sell, then remove the restriction. Both patterns appear repeatedly in post-mortems; scanners surface the enabling capabilities before the arc completes.
Cool-downs and anti-whale limits
Time-gates between buy and sell, and max-transaction caps, present themselves as anti-dump protection. When those limits are owner-adjustable, they double as exit-control: the cap drops right before news hits. Adjustable limits get flagged; fixed ones are usually fine.
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