Square-shaped, bright and green salt is a treasure among Rong salts. These Rong salts were also called Qiang salts in the past. They were tributes from the Qiang Rong to China, so they were also called monarch salts. Most people are not qualified to enjoy them.
It is rich in many minerals, mainly salt produced in salt lakes.
The green salt produced in Qinghai is of the best quality. The first-class green salt sold by the Tokyo Supply and Marketing Cooperative is Qinghai Rong Salt.
It was exchanged during trade.
It is transported back to Sichuan from the distant Qinghai, then goes out to sea along the river, and then transported by sea to Penglai.
Because it has traveled thousands of miles, the price is extremely expensive, costing hundreds of renminbi per catty. Especially the first-grade Qinghai Rong salt, which is of high quality, costs 1,000 renminbi per jin.
This kind of high-quality green salt, even in Qinghai, where it is produced, can only be enjoyed by the kings of Khan and Taiji, and ordinary people cannot use such good salt.
Of course, the main reason why it is so expensive is due to high taxes.
Every store that sells salt must have a salt sales license (license). Wholesale stores have to pay a license fee of 50 yuan a year, specialized retail stores have to pay 20 yuan, part-time retail stores have to pay 10 yuan, and vendors have to pay 5 yuan.
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The salt of the Shaotian Dynasty was a civilian system where the government was responsible for official collection, transportation, and sales. The imperial court was only responsible for the unified purchase, and the production and sales were all owned by the people. There was no exclusive merchant or exclusive bank system. The imperial court set up salt warehouses in various salt-producing areas and sent officials to supervise them.
Salt is produced and purchased into warehouses, and a production tax is levied on salt residents.
Anyone who wants to sell salt can come to the salt warehouse to buy salt.
You only need to apply for a license, which is relatively cheap and is equivalent to the license tax.
Then you can buy salt, order the quantity, and then pay the tax and issue an invoice. This is the special salt tax. This tax is the most expensive. It is 100% taxed at the wholesale price. For example, a bag of salt of 100 kilograms, salt warehouse
If it's two hundred cents per bag, two cents per catty, then you have to pay a tax of two hundred cents, and the tax is two cents per catty, double that.
After paying the tax, pay the salt payment, and then issue an invoice to collect the salt. You can transport and sell it freely. You can sell it wherever you like. There are no professional sales areas or specialized dealers. Adulteration and missing weight are not allowed.
Less than two, or the price is too high, etc.
Of course, if you go through customs or regular customs, you still have to pay customs duties, and you also have to pay customs fees.
Landing tax is levied at 10% on the value, and it is collected wherever the land is landed. In addition, 10% is also levied on residence.
The tariff is equivalent to a tariff surcharge, which is only levied once during transportation, with a tax rate of 10%.
If it is sold by an official or merchant, there will still be a 10% public sale fee.
In order to collect taxes better, the imperial court is now trying out a one-time tax payment method in the salt warehouse. Except for the output tax paid by the salt residents themselves, the rest are paid first by the merchants who buy the salt.
The total is 100% salt tax, 10% customs duty, 10% sales tax, 10% landing tax, 10% residential tax, and 10% public sales fee, so the actual collection is 10%.
One hundred and four.
The salt property tax is 10%.
The salt here in Shandong is sea salt, and its production cost is very low. The purchasing price of a pound of salt was originally less than a penny, but the imperial court purchased salt collectively.
The salt produced by the common people was purchased from various places. Depending on its quality, the purchase price was about one hundred cents per hundred kilograms. This year, the imperial court raised the purchase price, and a pack of good quality was one hundred cents.
If one pound of silver is used for one hundred catties of salt, they will have to pay a salt production tax of ten cents per bag of salt.
The salt warehouse sells salt to salt dealers at double the price, two cents of silver per hundred catties. The salt dealer pays various taxes at this price of two cents and eight cents, making a total of four cents and eight cents of salt price and salt tax.
Before the Ming Dynasty, the salt tax levied on salt residents was usually a rated salt tax. According to the rules, the levy was two qian and more than one cent of silver for every salt introduced, two hundred jins for one jin, and one qian for one hundred jins. In reality, it was mostly a rated tax.
For example, one acre of salt field requires three taels of silver, but in reality there is still an additional shortage of silver.
In the Ming Dynasty, the actual tax rate on salt was very high, so the salt people sold their salt privately to salt dealers, which became the source of the proliferation of private salt in the Ming Dynasty.
But now in the Shaotian Dynasty, the salt removal class has been stopped and changed to a salt production tax. The tax is 10% based on the actual production when the salt is paid. One hundred catties is only levied about ten cents, compared with the previous tax of one cent for one hundred catties.
In fact, the tax rate is reduced by ten times.
In the past, salt residents had to pay various additional assessments, which led to the proliferation of private salt.
Salt merchants pay taxes and issue invoices in salt warehouses to collect salt and sell it to various places. Their biggest cost besides tax is freight, so the price of salt varies depending on the distance.
Denglai is very close to the salt field and even has its own salt warehouse, so there is almost no transportation cost.
The Royal Supply and Marketing Cooperative under the supervision of the Royal Shaofu also operates the salt industry. With the royal name, it accounts for most of Tokyo's salt sales. In fact, the royal family also has a salt shipping company that specializes in transporting salt to various places, especially inland areas, and then in
There are also salt wholesale shops established in various places, which sell wholesale to salt sellers and also to their own distribution agencies.
It's just that the salt shipping business, the local salt wholesale houses, and the distribution agencies are all separate and independent, and each accounts for its profits and losses.
As a sales agent, when a supply and marketing cooperative buys salt from a salt dealer, it must settle the 10% public sales fee to the salt dealer, and it must also pay a salt license fee.
Fixed business tax, per cent.
The salt merchants sell the salt to salt merchants in various places at a higher price according to the transportation distance and transportation costs. However, since trafficking is now allowed, the salt merchants do not dare to increase the price arbitrarily. If the price is too high, others will buy other salts.
Merchant sells salt.
Therefore, even if the royal salt operation is to control the price to a reasonable level, the supply and marketing cooperative as the terminal wholesale and retail will not raise it too high.
In a market economy, any excessively high price often gives competitors an opportunity to seize the market.
This is one of the benefits of breaking up monopolies.
The Tokyo Supply and Marketing Cooperative takes salt directly from the salt warehouse, and the cost is only four yuan for eight hundred kilograms of salt. He has a license of fifty yuan a year, and the business tax quota is not high. As long as he sells more, the cost is spread.
rare.
Based on the sales volume in Tokyo, excluding labor and other taxes and fees, the cost is only five cents per catty, so the price of salt in Tokyo is generally sixty-seven cents per catty, and you can still make a profit.
Of course, the price of good salt is more expensive. For example, the best green salt from Qinghai sells for thousands of yuan per catty. This thing is like a luxury product and is not for ordinary people across the street.
The local sea salt from Shandong that ordinary people eat, the cheapest one even costs only six cents a pound, but it is still good salt without any soil mixed in. Although the grains are a bit larger, it is much better than the official salt in the past.
Even if it is more precise, seven cents per pound is already very good.
If it weighs eight cents per pound, it is as fine as pink and white as snow.
Six hundred yuan per hundred catties, this price is much cheaper than during the Chongzhen period, especially the quality, the previous private salt was not so good.
During the Wanli period, a pound of smuggled Huai salt in Jiangxi cost at least fourteen yuan, which was the price of a pound of pork at that time.
When prices were relatively stable in Jiajing, the smuggled raw salt from Guangdong was sold to Guangdong and Jiangxi for only seven or eight cents per pound. What is raw salt? It is the kind of natural seaside salt field or salt lake, which is not processed.
After filtering, some are shoveled and sold directly, and some are dried and packaged directly without dissolving, purifying, or processing. If this kind of salt is used to feed livestock, pickled fish, and pickled vegetables, it is fine, but if it is eaten, it is actually very bad.
It's cakey, bitter, and contains many impurities.
But the price of cooked salt is high, especially when the official salt price is high. This kind of smuggled raw salt is so cheap that ordinary people don't care. After all, in Huguang, even in water and land terminal distribution centers like Wuchang, salt merchants dare to raise the wholesale price.
Set at fifty cents per catty.
The Anhui area is also close to the Yangtze River and Lianghuai Salt Fields, and can also be sold at a wholesale price of more than 30 yuan per catty.
In times of war, floods and other situations, a pack of salt can even be sold for ten taels of silver. The price of salt in places such as Sichuan and Guizhou has long been hundreds of cents per catty, or even three to five hundred cents. Many people cannot afford salt at all.
This is also the reason for the proliferation of illicit salt in the Ming Dynasty. The court's salt tax was heavy, so officials, salt merchants, salt collectors, and ordinary people were selling illicit salt. The salt tax in the Ming Dynasty was extremely high, but the cost of taxation was extremely high. In the end, the tax was collected
The salt tax is only a million taels a year.
Originally, according to his salt tax, the actual salt tax amount should be at least more than 10 million taels.
The result was that the salt households suffered from the salt tax, and the people could not afford salt and had to eat light food. The court did not receive the salt tax but was scolded. In the end, it actually enriched the salt merchants and those salt officials, forming many salt merchant oligarchs.
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Yangzhou became a place of great wealth in the Ming and Qing Dynasties precisely because of these salt merchants and salt officials who colluded with officials and businessmen. Their money was too easy to come by.
They raised thin horses in the gardens, set up banquets for thousands of taels, and bought a prostitute for thousands of taels. Therefore, Yangzhou's gardens were famous and brothels flourished.
Since the late Ming Dynasty, private salt has a very high market share, perhaps as much as 70 to 80%, so a very strange phenomenon has formed. The salt tax and price of official salt are very high, but the annual sales are very small. And
When people use salt, they mostly eat private salt, which is cheaper, but the national salt tax and salt profits are also misappropriated.
During the Chongzhen period, the price of salt in Wang Fuzhi's hometown of Hengzhou was three or four cents of silver per catty. This was private salt shipped from Guangdong. This private salt route from Guangdong to Changsha Wuchang was extremely profitable. During his relationship with Du Yinxi
At the beginning of the rebellion, he immediately controlled this salt transportation line and obtained millions of taels of silver every year to supplement the military expenses of the rebel army.
In places such as Huazhou in Guanzhong, the price of salt has even risen to nine cents per catty.
Yunnan and Guizhou, which has always been short of salt, rely mostly on well salt and salt from Qinghai. Due to the war and road blockage, many people have not even tasted salt for a year or two and have to eat saltpeter.
When Zhu Yihai of the Shaotian Dynasty first launched his army, he reformed the salt production system in the controlled areas. After controlling the salt fields, he allowed traders to purchase and sell the salt, which resulted in lower taxes. The great benefit of this was to compete for market share and further crack down on smuggling.
The biggest problem with the proliferation of illegal salt is the huge profits from selling salt.
For example, the salt in Wang Fuzhi's hometown today is still cooked salt sold by the government, and it is also transported from Guangdong. It only costs about ten coins per catty, and it is less than twenty coins per catty in Changsha and Yiling.
With the help of water transportation, the cost of transporting salt has been reduced, especially after the layers of taxation and apportionment at checkpoints have been eliminated, the cost of salt has been greatly reduced, especially after the monopoly system of salt merchants in the past has been abolished. Under market regulation, salt is transported wherever it is closest, and the middle
There are also fewer layers of sales links, further reducing costs.
Although the salt seemed to be sold cheaply, the tax collected by the court was not much.
The salt bought for one cent per pound, with taxes and markups at all stages, has increased several times, to almost five cents.
How much salt do people eat on average in a year? If the price of salt is not too high, then seven or eight kilograms of salt will be eaten, so the annual production and sales of salt are hundreds of millions of kilograms. Considering the population in Wanli, it may be eaten in a year
One billion pounds of salt.
Even if the country only consumes 600 million kilograms of salt a year, this is still a big number.
Although the Tatars still control many places, they have now moved their borders and banned the sea. The largest salt-producing areas within their territory, such as Shanxi Jiechi, Putan, and Ningxia Saltchi, are now basically controlled by the Ming army.
They have almost completely lost their salt producing areas.
All the salt needed had to be smuggled in from the Ming Dynasty.
In the late Ming Dynasty, the imperial court tried every means to make money from salt. Merchants had to buy salt and leftover salt to make up for the tax. When distributing salt, they had to pay five cents of silver for each salt and keep it in the treasurer's name as relief silver to prepare for famines.
There are fire salt money, salt silver for repairing the Caohe River, and even the regular fine silver, cutting fine silver, collecting silver, and eight other items such as foot price and guarantee fee.
In addition, there is still a time lag between collecting the money and getting the salt, and there is still interest income, which is fifty to sixty thousand taels. Of course, the court can also issue salt quotas and ask the salt merchants to donate silver and rice, and the water merchants will pay
The dental tax and so on, theoretically these incomes add up to 2.5 million taels a year.
The Lianghuai Salt Fields alone can produce one billion jins of salt annually. During the Jiajing period, the Lianghuai Salt Fields produced 3.7 million jins, 740 million jins of salt, and hundreds of millions of jins of private salt.
The Ming Dynasty once implemented a salt banknote system based on household registration, and those over the age of fifteen were entitled to twelve kilograms of salt per year.
During the Wanli period, the demand for salt reached about 1.8 billion jins, but official sales were only about 500 million jins, and two-thirds of the market was occupied by private salt.
The Ming Dynasty also reformed the salt policy several times, but none of them had much effect. In the final analysis, the salt merchants colluded with government and businessmen to form a monopoly, forming a salt industry oligarchy, which seriously affected the court's salt policy.
The salt market is limited. If more official salt is sold, private salt will inevitably be hit.
Zhu Yihai's current policy is to lower the price of official salt and seize market share, thereby reducing the dimension and cracking down on private salt dealers. Although his official salt still adds a lot of tax, after the tax is invoiced, the journey will be smooth.
As for private salt without tickets, its transportation costs will be high. In the past, profits were high. Salt households, salt merchants, salt officials, local checkpoints along the way, local officials, etc. all shared the money, and everyone colluded together.
And now the price of official salt has made the profit margin of private salt very low. If he continues to maintain the smuggling network and set up checkpoints, the cost may be the same as paying taxes. He will also have to bear the burden of beheading, ransacking homes and being exiled.
The risk is just not worth it.
Especially now, the cost and risk of colluding with officials by paying money is still high. Supervision is too strict, and officials without enough benefits do not dare to mess around.
Even after the salt class was reduced, the actual income from salt production has increased a lot. There is no need to take such a big risk to sell private salt. Selling directly to the salt warehouse saves trouble and makes money.
And now under the new atmosphere of the new dynasty, there will be far fewer officials, soldiers, and subordinates involved in smuggling. After all, the investigation is strict.
When costs and benefits are not proportional, fewer people will take desperate risks.
The costs for serious salt merchants are taxes and transportation, while the costs for smuggled salt merchants include not only transportation, but also the cost of opening up joints and breaking the law.
Official salt is all refined salt, and it only costs a few cents per pound. How can private salt be sold?
Nowadays, while the imperial court collects salt tax, it also has government-run transportation companies and salt shops, as well as royal-run salt transportation companies, salt warehouses, salt stacks, and salt shops, etc. There are also many benefits from this.
Not to mention that selling smuggled salt to Tatar-occupied areas is now more profitable.
The price of salt has dropped a lot, but the salt tax has increased several times.