What rate should I set taxes at in a medium sized city?

Solution 1:

Along with what mizipzor said, I think you might find this useful:

As requested by JonathanJ, here's some other Prima guide information:

http://imgur.com/a/gUFqn

Solution 2:

There is no always correct and optimal answer (and there shouldn't be). But here are the guidelines:

1. Low taxes increases growth. In this SimCity people really like low taxes.
2. High taxes increases income. Obviously, yes.
3. But too high taxes causes people to move out.

The important part here is the tradeoff between growth and income. Sometimes I zone large areas of resedential and set the tax to 0% for a while to fill them really quickly. Sometimes you want to (or recently have) placed an expensive building and want to sacrifice growth to get your money back. In the end where your entire plot is filled with skyscrapers you dont need growth and can start milking your city for money (usually to jump start your next city).