"It costs a lot of money to transport tea to the two capitals every year. Once the tribute tea is lost, it will take a lot of effort to make up for it. Wuyi Mountain Tea has been paid tribute twice in these years, and my family can hardly bear it."

Everyone was silent. The nominal taxes of the Ming Dynasty were not high, but the cost of taxation was very high.

Taking this tea as an example, the biggest cost is not producing the tea, but transporting the tea to the capital.

Maybe the imperial court only needs 100 kilograms of tea, but when transporting it, it has to prepare 300 or even 400 kilograms, and even prepare two teams for transportation, just for fear of something going wrong during the transportation of tea.

Moreover, it was not easy to transport it to the capital, and it had to be inspected by officials from Taichang. If the tea was not up to standard, the tea plantation owners in Wuyi Mountain had to raise large sums of money each time to bribe these officials from Taicang.

When Su Ze was a graduate student, the three major mountains in ancient history were the official system of the Song Dynasty, the financial system of the Ming Dynasty, and the military system of the Qing Dynasty.

If you want to know one of them clearly, you need a doctoral degree.

Those who can understand both items will start as associate professors.

If you pass all three, you will be considered a master of history!

The financial and taxation system of the Ming Dynasty was so complex that it cannot be explained clearly in a few words.

However, the biggest problem with the tax system of the Ming Dynasty was that the cost of taxation even exceeded the tax collected.

To put it simply, even if the Yanping Prefecture tribute Pu'er tea costs 500 kilograms per year, it is not that much. The highest-quality Wuyishan tea in the market does not cost more than one tael of silver per kilogram. The Wuyishan tea that troubles the Xiong family

The tribute, converted into silver, was only five hundred taels of silver.

And the five hundred taels of silver were not borne by the Xiong family alone, but by more than a dozen tea gardens under Wuyi Mountain.

This amount of money is not particularly large for the Xiong family, but the tribute tea itself is only the most insignificant expenditure on the tribute tea.

To deliver these 500 kilograms of Wuyi Mountain tea to the two capitals, the Xiong family and other tea plantation owners have to deliver it to the two capitals in person, and they must deliver it within a time limit, and if they fail to do so within the period, they will be punished.

The Xiong family had to spend money to hire people to deliver tea on their behalf, prepare more tea leaves to prevent tea loss on the road, and arrange for officials and eunuchs to collect the tea when it was delivered to the two capitals. If something happened to the people on their behalf, the Xiong family had to compensate.

Lin Zongzong came down and sent 500 kilograms of tea worth less than 500 taels of silver to the two capitals. The total cost was more than 2,000 taels of silver.

And what will happen to the five hundred kilograms of Wuyi Mountain tea sent to the two capitals?

Emperor Jiajing did not like Wuyi Mountain tea with a rich taste. After it was delivered to Taicang, it was always given to the emperor's relatives and noble officials. Moreover, there were so many types of tea as tribute that Taicang destroyed last year's old tea every year.

Lose.

Su Ze asked: "Didn't we already offer tea this year? Why is Brother Xiong still worried?"

The best tea leaves are picked and made around Qingming and Guyu. It is already June and this year's tea tribute has been sent.

Xiong Yue sighed and said: "This year's tea tribute has been concluded. In recent years, we tea farmers have also been active in the Chief Envoy's Department, requesting that the natural color collection be changed to the color silver collection, and the Ministry of Household Affairs has approved it."

"This is a good thing! Why is Brother Xiong worried?"

Xiong Yue sighed and said: "It is a good thing to change the payment method to Zese, but our Xiong family is destined to share eighty taels of silver!"
Chapter completed!