The following modifiers will make the council more likely to agree to a tax hike:

-The cities monthly income is negative or zero

-The cities treasury (or bank if you prefer) is empty or in defecit

-The party voting on the proposal is of a "tax and spend" disposition (i.e. not rightwing basically). Normally in every era there are parties who will oppose any taxation whatsoever, no matter how nessesary, but they usually don't form a majority in the city council.

So from this we can take that to raise taxes we need to have negative income, if you still can't get taxes to pass, let a few months roll by untill the negative income empties the treasury at this point even the most anti-tax parties'll swing to favor it.

Additional notes:

In the later era's you will unlock options for raising taxes for individual groups. This is a very usefull upgrade as certain parties actually *like* taxing a certain group (eg communists like taxing the rich, conservatives like taxing the poor etc.)

The following modifiers will make the council agree with you on founding a new district:

-there is a high positive demand in one or more RCI (Residential, Commercial, Industrial) categories.
-the cities treasury contains enough money to supply the initial founding cost
-the cities monthly income is high enough to cover the initial maintenance of the district

Basically the same as with founding districts but:

- if a wheel of life modifier (eg Social life, Environment) is low or negative the council will often accept a new service that fixes this even while on negative income and with the city in debt.

-Threatening, demanding, blackmailing and even overrruling are powerful tools to pass proposals that would normally fail, but be extremely cautious about using them in Era III and beyond as tanking goodwill can lead to a failed mayoral election and subsequent game over. Conversely in the early Era's when you are still Emperors Nominee you can basically go berserk without many consequences.

-You can undermine parties that are against everything you propose by releasing the dirt your spies dig up to the press (or making it public in another way, the event changes throughout the Era's). This will create a public scandal and cost the party support so they have less total seats in council or even get voted out altogether. This will, of course, cost you the oppertunity to use the dirt later, but if you cripple them enough you wont need it regardless.

- In the early era's you can't get voted out, so try to abuse this fact to try and lay a solid foundation for your city by establishing a lot of services and such before you have to be "nice" to people...