So there are a few issues with the economy right now and they are along with the plugins towny and signshop
With our economy it only counts as you having money if its in your inventory which is usually is not, this causes issues with towny since it cant collect tax if you dont have emerald in your inventory and with signshop since if you dont have emerald in your inventory it wont give anything for sellers (unless you can put it in the chest but i doubt it).

I have a solution but it would require a new economy plugin. We could use an economy plugin which does not use actually things as money but has an account you can have for money, we could still only use emerald as money by simply only setting up shops that will buy emerald for a set price. This way you get emerald, sell it at the shop, and it goes into your account which you cannot cheat towny out of tax with.

Im sure this has its issues as well but it seems better to me since you dont need to carry emerald around to have money.

Yeah, we want to be able to collect our taxes!!! and also, I agree with this. GoldIsMoney has a bit of a downfall when it comes to this. I think that *shudders* iConomy would be the simplest solution even though I am against iConomy. What has to be done is what has to be done.

Also with something like iconomy you can give money much easier. Rather than giving them the emeralds you simply type in a command /money give "amount" "player" or "player" "amount" or something like that lol.

yeah, economy systems like that are simply much easier and less of a hastle