Solidity multiplication always resulting in 0

Question

I'm trying to pay royalties from a contract to multiple wallets, however the multiplication is always sending me to 0.

function withdraw_to_taxman() public view returns (uint256){
    uint256 balance = address(this).balance;
    uint256 withdraw_amount = balance * _tax_rate;
    return (withdraw_amount);
}

I'm writing this function to test how much I will withdraw, and then I would divide by 100 to get the actual withdrawal amount given that _tax_rate is a %. This withdraw_amount always returns 0, and I'm not sure why tax_rate is a uint256 that I am testing at the value of 1 I would greatly appreciate any help, thanks

Answer 1

Does your contract have a balance?

I tried the follwing code and it worked for me:

contract Contract {

    uint256 public _tax_rate = 1;

    function withdraw_to_taxman() public view returns (uint256){
        uint256 balance = address(this).balance;
        uint256 withdraw_amount = balance * _tax_rate;
        return (withdraw_amount);
    }

    receive() external payable {}

}

I sent 5 wei to the receive() external payable function so the balance of my contract is 5 wei. The _tax_rate value is 1, and when I called the withdraw_to_taxman function it returns 5.

I deployed it and verified it on Rinkeby so you can play around with it:

https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0x83E6C7707B8610b32157e8897CEd5C8375F5C04F#readContract

https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0x83E6C7707B8610b32157e8897CEd5C8375F5C04F#writeContract

I sent 0.000531 ether and set the tax_rate to 3 and withdraw_to_taxman returns: 1593000000000000, as expected.