Chapter 1236 Heavy Taxes, Smuggling
This terrible speed of making money is very amazing.
However, due to the poor smelting, processing and minting technology of the Wa Kingdom and the imperial court, not only would they not make money but also lose money by making it themselves, so the Qin family unceremoniously made another sum of money from the Wa Kingdom. In the coinage agreement reached with them, every one Thousands of coins, the Wa country has to pay ten coins for minting fees.
Ten thousandths doesn't seem like much, but 300,000 guan is also 3,000 guan, and this money is purely for nothing.
"Have you seen the Su'er family? Has there been an agreement to open a bank over there?"
Qin Lu shook his head in embarrassment, "They refused. They refused to let us open a bank in the country of Wa, and they didn't allow our bank to circulate there."
"It's okay, take your time."
Rome used gold coins, Persia used silver coins, and ancient China has always used copper coins. The currencies of various countries are closely related to their own systems, and of course they are more related to resources.
"The Wa country has recently imposed heavy taxes, which has led to serious smuggling. Almost all wealthy families in various places have participated in smuggling, and even some tycoons along the coast have organized pirates to rob while smuggling." Qin Lu told Qin Lang that the country of Wa imported goods from Tang Dynasty For the imported tea, green tea worth 20 guan for every 100 catties has to be taxed 50 guan.
Such a high tax has caused Japanese merchants to be overwhelmed and smuggled and smuggled.
Although there is a monopoly system for tea in the Tang Dynasty, tea is the same as salt, sugar and wine, and a special tax is levied on it compared with ordinary goods, and some are even monopolized.
Tea leaves are picked and processed from tea farmers, and purchased by tea merchants. Just like table salt, tea can only be purchased with salt citations, which are tax receipts.
Tea farmers are registered with the government, and merchants who sell tea first pay money to the government and then receive tea citations. The tea citations are equivalent to bills of lading and tax payment certificates.
The tax on tea is five tenths.
It is lower than the salt tax, because the salt tax is directly added to the salt price by ten times, and the salt of ten yuan is taxed by one hundred yuan, and it is sold for one hundred and one. And Datang's tea tax went from 5% at the beginning, then to 10%, then to 15%, to 33%, and now to 5% of 10%. The rising tea tax reveals that the tea tax importance.
Now the national peak tea output is 50 million catties per year. According to different teas, a tax of five-tenths of the price is levied. Taxes are very different, but there was no such thing as tea tax before.
But even the tea tax of five tenths is not as ruthless as the tax of fifty guan for a load of tea in the Japanese country, because the general export tea is about 20 guan, and the tax of fifty guan is equivalent to a tax of 20 guan. Two hundred and five percent, five times the tea tax of the Tang Dynasty.
Of course, those Japanese businessmen were unwilling, so they could only smuggle in desperation.
"The local copper price in Japan is 106 yuan per catty, while the export price is 112 yuan."
This price cannot be said to be cheap, but it is not expensive either. After all, the original copper materials of the Tang Dynasty were very expensive. It is sixty-eight percent, more than fifteen points each for lead and tin. This money is actually not yellow and clear, but a little blue and white.
The total weight of Kaiyuan Tongbao is six catties and eight taels, each of which weighs one coin, so the actual amount of copper used is about four catties and three taels, and this weight is actually just the usual weight of five baht meat in the Sui Dynasty before the Tang Dynasty.
The copper used in Tang Yiguan's money is the total weight of the five baht coins of the Sui Dynasty. Of course, it must be called super good money.
In the Wude Dynasty of the Tang Dynasty, Kaiyuan Tongbao was cast, regardless of the labor cost, only the material cost was 750 yuan, but the actual price of a catty of copper material was about 160 yuan.
However, if you take copper ware, it is worth at least six hundred yuan per catty. Therefore, in order to ensure the copper material for casting coins, the imperial court imposed various restrictions on copper.
The export price of a catty of copper in Japan is only 112 yuan, which is 48 yuan per catty cheaper than the domestic copper price in Tang Dynasty, and the actual market price in China is even higher.
However, compared with the profits of silk, porcelain, tea candy, etc., there is still a big difference. However, because the merchant ships going to Japan do not have any good merchants to bring back, they can only bring copper and silver.
"Recently, the navy has been patrolling the sea very well."
Copper was very scarce in the Tang Dynasty, so Japanese copper is still very popular, but because of the scarcity of copper, especially the domestic court deliberately limited the market price of copper materials, fixed at 160 per catty, but If the casting tool can have several times the benefits.
Therefore, many maritime merchants are unwilling to ship the copper back to China after obtaining copper from Japan, because in the Tang Dynasty, copper materials were restricted commodities, and the imperial court stipulated that imported copper materials could only be sold to the imperial court.
The price is one hundred and sixty-one catties, and it depends on the quality.
So now the sea merchants have also begun to become more sophisticated. They transported copper to Linyi and other overseas places, produced and cast copper wares and sold them.
"How about we also cast some bronze wares?" Qin Lu asked. "The countries in the east of the sea and the countries in Southeast Asia still have a huge demand for copper wares. Even Hu merchants in the western and western countries are willing to buy them, and the price is good. The profit of casting copper wares is several times that of minting coins."
But Qin Lang just shook his head when he boarded the boat and inspected the copper materials that had just been shipped from the country of Wa.
"The Tang Dynasty lacked both copper and money. Now that we have obtained copper materials, we are the first to make money. Besides, the imperial court has allowed us to mint money at the Luzon Mint, but they have not allowed us to privately cast bronze wares? Only the imperial court Only the bronze ware workshops have the right to produce some bronze mirrors and other life-related copper utensils under three catties, and other people do not have this qualification."
"The consequences of violating the imperial court's copper ban system are very serious."
"We don't necessarily have to make bronze wares in Luzon. We can go to Linyi, and it will not violate the law."
Qin Lang smiled, "Then you can escape the inspection of the navy ship first, and if you are caught transporting copper to Linyi, you will be guilty of smuggling prohibited copper materials."
Qin Lu was not reconciled, what a huge profit.
Qin Lang didn't care too much about it. There are many profitable businesses, and the profit of coin minting can be kept at more than 10%, not to mention that mining and smelting still have a lot of profit. One more thing, the Qin family transported Japanese copper back Casting Kaiyuan Tongbao and then transporting it back to the Japanese country for circulation is what the Japanese country urgently needs. There is still a lot of room for manipulation and additional influence.
"Hurry up and unload all these copper materials from the ship, first send them to refining, separate out the silver and copper, and then transport them to the mint to mint coins, drive them out early, and transport them back to Japan."
"I'm still looking forward to seeing everyone in the Wa Kingdom use my Great Tang Kaiyuan Tongbao." Qin Lang said with a smile.
As for the Japanese country's heavy taxation on imported tea, Qin Lang can't control it for the time being. The Japanese people love to drink tea and import a lot of tea. The Japanese country thinks of ways to collect taxes to fill their finances. This is their own business.
Although the Qin family was an important tea plantation, processing and sales business in the Tang Dynasty, the Japanese tea market only occupied a very small share, and it did not affect much.
The main market for Qinjia tea is the domestic market of Datang, and the tea market for export is all middle and low-grade tea.
These teas are harvested by tea merchants from various tea farms, and then gathered in Raozhou, Jiangxi. This place near the middle reaches of the Yangtze River is a famous tea distribution center in the south.
Here the tea is transferred to the tea merchants in Canton, Hangyang, and Dengzhu Foreign Trade Ports. These tea merchants sell the tea to Zhugang and sell it to the tea houses there.
The tea store collects tea, and finally sells it to Hu merchants who come to Tang Dynasty, or Tang merchants who want to go to sea. When they sell tea, they generally charge commissions, breakage fees, customs duties, and handling fees, which are about 15% of the tea price. The commission is generally 2%, and the tea tariff is 10%.
Basically, the entire process of exporting tea is that tea farmers produce tea, tea merchants collect raw tea, and then tea houses collect tea to make tea, and tea houses sell the processed tea from tea houses to commercial firms and merchant ships in ports. There are many intermediate links, basically The commercial banks in the port will not pick tea directly from the tea farms, but go through these links. Relatively speaking, the efficiency is actually higher, and the quality and after-sales are also more guaranteed.
Therefore, although the Qin family is a large tea producer, in fact, the tea exported from various ports has little to do with the Qin family itself.
It is mainly related to tea shops. The tea shops in Hong Kong are basically engaged in the export tea business. They communicate with tea houses and tea merchants in various places to purchase tea, and at the same time communicate with foreign trade maritime companies. In and out, it is equivalent to a foreign trade company. It does not just need to find customers, sea merchants, but also tea merchants, and often has to provide strong funds for advances.
Tea farmers generally deal with tea dealers. These people travel to tea producing areas to buy tea, and then sell it to tea houses that process tea.
The tea from the tea house is then sold to the tea shop, and the tea shop sells the tea to various tea shops for domestic sales, or tea shops for export, etc. Each perform their own responsibilities and do their own part well. In fact, every link is not something that outsiders can easily do.
There are many routines in it, and each has its own specialty.
For example, a tea vendor must be familiar with the place where the tea is produced, understand the raw tea market, grasp the season, and even have strong transportation capabilities, and may have to have sufficient funds to advance the tea collection process.
Naturally, a tea house must have excellent tea-making technology. Without some real skills, it is impossible to make a living in this industry. All kinds of tea, all kinds of processing methods, this is the most professional.
To receive tea and produce tea, the tea store has to build its own tea warehouse, and what it needs is a good channel.
There are tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of tea leaves, and there is no way to suppress them without any strength.
When exporting tea to the end, it is naturally various foreign trade firms. They need to concentrate on doing a good job in sales channels, how to entrust tea to a merchant ship to an overseas country, how to find buyers and customers, and ensure that they can both sell and receive. Money has to be profitable.
The risks they take are also enormous.
Compared with the heavy tax of 50 guan per load imposed by the Japanese country on imported Tang tea, Qin Lang is more concerned about the restrictions on immigration in Luzon, and the speed of population inflow has almost stagnated. How can we break this deadlock?