Chapter 464: On Salt

At the quiet table, everyone looked at Jia Lian with burning eyes.

Jia Lian picked up a piece of deer breast and was about to put it into his mouth. When he saw this, he glanced at everyone, then put down his chopsticks and wiped his hands.

"Everyone, do you really want to listen?"

"Please make it clear!"

Jia Lian returned the handkerchief to Zhao next to him Son. Wu Zhirong and others can wave the waiter away, but they have no right to ask his people to leave the table.

Turning his head to look at Zhou Boru and the two men beside him, Jia Lian said: "President Zhou, Vice President Wang, the court is very dissatisfied with you!"

When everyone heard this, their expressions changed a little.

Facing Jia Lian, Zhou Boru was very calm. He hurriedly adopted a more respectful attitude, cupped his hands with Jia Lian and said, "Please teach me, sir. I am very grateful to you."

Jia Lian looked at Zhou Boru and blinked slightly. No wonder the information he got was the least about this person, and he couldn't even confirm who he was relying on.

However, to be able to secure the position of president all year round, and to have the largest share of the entire Lianghuai Salt Policy, there must be many things that ordinary people don't know about.

“Of the four major salt taxes in the world, Yangzhou is the most hefty, accounting for almost half of the world’s salt tax. The amount of tax money entering the state treasury ranges from seven to eight million to eight to nine million. However, since the year before last, Yangzhou's salt tax has dropped sharply to less than seven million taels. Last year, it did not even reach six million... …

If this continues, in a few years, the entire Yangzhou Salt Administration will not even be able to pay the national tax?"

There is an inevitable irony in Jia Lian's words. , all the officials and salt merchants present could hear it.

Most of the officials here today have been fed by salt merchants every year. Hearing what Jia Lian said at this time, he was also complaining in his heart. These salt merchants were greedy and touched the bottom line of the court, which made them also worried.

The salt merchants also had ideas. The small salt merchants complained in their hearts to the big salt merchants, and the big salt merchants blamed each other, blaming others for having a larger share and engaging in large-scale smuggling, making it impossible for everyone to step down.

Vice President Wang Shanxiang couldn’t help but explain to Jia Lian: "I don’t know, sir, but there is a reason for this..."

"Oh? Tell me. ”

“The reason why the salt tax was reduced in the past two years is all because of the court’s new salt policy!

We all work for the court, no matter what I'll wait for any decrees issued by the imperial court.Also fully supported and assisted.

The imperial court asked us to donate money, and we all obeyed. It's just that originally what I was waiting for was hard work, and almost all the profits I made every year were handed over to the court, leaving only some meager profits to barely make ends meet for the brothers below. The imperial court suddenly asked us to spend extra money and effort to escort grain and grass to the border, which made our situation even worse.

As the saying goes, you are responsible for your profits and losses. It is really difficult for us to maintain the previous total national tax after having to bear such huge expenses. How could the imperial court know that although the tax revenue from the state treasury has been lowered, the lives of salt merchants like me are even more miserable? To be able to pay so much national tax, I have to wait for a few companies to subsidize the profits of many previous years to get so much..."

Jia Lian suppressed a smile and pretended to be confused. Said: "Is this so? But as far as I know, after the imperial court launched the New Deal, Franchisers and others raised the price of salt by 10%. The extra official salt income was enough to offset the donations and losses. "

"This is the inconsiderate part of the imperial court. The adults in the imperial court only think that raising the price of salt can increase our profits. As everyone knows, there are only so many people who eat salt in the world. As the price of salt increases, many people choose not to eat salt. We, the merchants, can buy and sell freely, so the common people will not stop buying salt, and we will force them to buy it, right?

Of course, this is not to be blamed on the imperial court. The adults in the imperial court are all elegant people who have read poetry and books. It is common for them not to understand the business world.

Fortunately, the adults came to supervise the salt administration this time. The young people just asked the adults to petition the court on our behalf and abandon the method of donations. In this way, I believe that it won’t be long before the salt administration and national taxation can be completely completed. It is not impossible to recover even more than before! "

Wang Shanxiang said, looking at Jia Lian expectantly, as if Jia Lian was their savior who interceded with the inconsiderate court.

"Hehehe..."

Jia Lian finally laughed and took a deep breath to suppress the anger in his heart.

This person named Wang, this is Treat him like a nerd!

Although I had long known that these salt merchants would have their own rhetoric, I never expected that they would be so shameless.

And they want to use him as a gun?

How dare they say that salt merchants are hard workers? If word spreads, won’t businessmen from all walks of life in the world laugh out loud?

The Wei Dynasty has been resting and recuperating for a hundred years, with a population of nearly 20 million. How huge is the annual salt consumption?

Fortunately, the most important thing in the Wei Dynasty is the agricultural tax. The collection of salt tax is not It’s not too high, but only about 30% of the price of salt. In this way, although it is still not cheap for ordinary people to eat salt, it is still better than some people who use salt to plate their dishes.The dynasties that stripped the common people were much better.

Nowadays, the market price of salt is only between forty and seventy cents per catty. After all, even if a person eats freely, he can barely eat one tael of silver per year. Save a little, one or two coins is enough.

Such expenses are not really high for Wei’s living standard. At least for the prosperous Jiangnan land, it is not a problem at all.

But even so, on average, the revenue of salt merchants all over the world is at least 70 million taels.

What a huge piece of cake is this? You know, the annual income of the entire Wei Dynasty is almost only this amount.

According to Lin Ruhai and others, the cost of raw materials to produce a pound of coarse salt in Jiangnan Salt Farm is only two to three yuan, which is basically negligible compared to the market price.

In other words, if the imperial court can truly achieve this and collect all the benefits of the salt policy into the national treasury, it can almost double the annual revenue of the national treasury! Of course, this is theoretical and almost impossible to achieve in practice.

The Salt Administration of the Wei Dynasty also used salt yin, with 300 kilograms as one yin, and each yin collected a regular salt tax of three taels and eight taels of silver!

Zhengke Salt Tax is the national tax.

Calculated in this way, even if the salt tax is calculated based on fifty cents per catty, it only accounts for less than 30% of the selling price.

In other words, the salt merchants still have at least 70% of their income, which can be used to pay miscellaneous taxes for the local government, the Salt Transportation Department, and other costs...

Even if these costs are high, facing a premium of upwards of 50 million taels, there is no problem at least leaving a net profit of 10 to 20 million taels.

This is still completely based on official salt.

Among the salt merchants in the world, which one does not secretly run some private salt business? As long as it is not obvious, the court will not care too much.

Therefore, the huge profits can be imagined.

There are less than a hundred salt merchants in the world who are qualified to operate the salt industry. One hundred families are divided into 10,000 and 20,000 yuan. On average, each family can receive at least 100,000 yuan every year.

This is so much money!

In this era when twenty taels of silver is enough for a family of four to live a stable and prosperous life for a whole year, one can imagine what an astronomical figure one hundred thousand taels of silver is.

This is the average number.

And the seven major salt merchants in Yangzhou, who occupy the richest area, make countless profits every year.

So, these people complained about poverty in front of him? It really makes Jia LianSuch a well-mannered person can't help but feel cold in his heart.

In fact, the imperial court realized that these Yangzhou salt merchants were too wealthy, so they decided to cut them off again to supplement the military and reduce treasury expenditures.

Jia Lian even still remembered the scene when the salt merchants went to patrol the Salt Censor’s Yamen to protest when they went to Yangzhou for the first time.

Perhaps there was no successful protest before the policy came down, but after the policy came down, they started to use their own tricks to force the court to submit in this way?

Look, just because of your mistakes, the revenue of the national treasury has been reduced so much. Why don’t you cancel the donation quickly so that the national treasury can recover its annual revenue?

To be honest, if the emperor were easy to fool, and the salt merchants used more power (money) in the court, it would really be possible for them to succeed in the game.

Unfortunately, Emperor Ning Kang had already realized some of their intentions and was ready to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys.