"… County Magistrate, His Majesty has issued a decree to reward the merchants who participated in the charity event yesterday. Other than publicly praising them on Datang Daily, the merchants who donated money yesterday will receive the same amount of tax exemption this year! However, more than half of the merchants who donated money yesterday came from our Lantian County. The total amount of money donated by these merchants is close to two hundred and sixty thousand strings of cash ~!
If our Lantian County collects taxes according to His Majesty's decree, won't we collect less than two hundred and sixty thousand strings of cash in business tax? The county office's treasury is already not abundant, and we even donated ten thousand strings of cash yesterday. After that, the county office still has to expand the city and assist Yunshan in laying electric wires for the county. Now that His Majesty has issued a decree, the business tax collected by our county office will be reduced sharply in the future. What should we do ~? "
In the back hall of the Lantian County office, County Deputy Meng held a notice in his hand as he worriedly spoke to County Magistrate He.
In the hall, other than the two of them, there was also Registrar Zhang and County Lieutenant Wang. It could be said that all the administrative officials of the Lantian County office were present. As for Dian Hu and Constable Sun, they were in charge of the prison and public security, so they did not participate in this small scale meeting within the county office.
The notice in County Deputy Meng's hand was naturally the notice of commending merchants that was posted in Chang 'an and the surrounding counties after the morning court. The four people present had all seen it. After County Deputy Meng finished speaking, Registrar Zhang could not help but speak up.
"County Magistrate, County Deputy Meng's worries are not without reason! Back then, Marquis returned the financial authority of Lantian County to the county office and instructed us to collect and use the taxes collected by the county office for the people. Seeing that the business in the city has just picked up and the business tax collected is increasing month by month, the county office dares to start many large and small projects.
Right now, we have such a big business and borrowed a lot of money from Yanhuang Bank. Furthermore, the expansion of the city walls and the laying of electric wires will require a lot of money. If we follow His Majesty's decree to collect taxes, in the remaining five months of this year, I'm afraid we will only be able to collect one or two thousand strings of cash in business tax, which is just a drop in the bucket!
In this way, not only will the two projects be stopped, but the money that our county office owes Yanhuang Bank will also be difficult to pay off! Therefore, I think that if we don't follow the emperor's order to collect taxes, we will continue to collect taxes according to the original policy. "
It had to be said that Li Er's imperial edict to reward the merchants who participated in the donation gathering yesterday had somewhat disrupted the development of Lantian County. If the tax reduction decree was implemented according to the imperial edict, Lantian County would suffer a huge financial loss!
First of all, there were currently more than six hundred merchants in Lantian County. However, there were more than three hundred merchants who participated in the fundraising event yesterday. Overall, the merchants who were willing to participate in the fundraising event at least proved that their shops were on the right track and were even making a lot of profits. These merchants were currently the largest taxpayers in Lantian County.
The reason why the other 300 plus merchants did not participate in the fundraiser was that, apart from a few people who were naturally stingy, most of the merchants had just moved to Lantian County. Their shops had already established themselves in Lantian County. In other words, they were not making any profits or were making very little profits, causing them to be short on cash. These merchants were the ones that Lantian County's County Government needed to support. At present, they could not contribute much to Lantian County's tax revenue.
If they were to collect taxes according to Li Er's tax reduction decree, the financial situation of Lantian County's County Government in the next few months could be imagined!
In addition, the tax collection rate in Lantian County was one out of six, while the tax collection rate in the other provinces and counties in Tang Dynasty was one out of thirty. This would lead to a problem:
Two merchants had participated in the fundraising event yesterday and donated a thousand strings of coins. However, one of them was from Lantian County while the other was from another county. According to Li Er's edict, the two of them would receive a tax exemption of a thousand strings of coins for the rest of the year. This might not seem like a problem, but if one were to combine it with the different tax collection rates in Lantian County and outside of Lantian County, there would be a huge problem!
According to the tax collection rate of one out of thirty for most provinces and counties in Tang Dynasty, as long as the merchant from another county who donated a thousand strings of coins did not make a total profit of more than thirty thousand strings of coins for the remaining five months of the year, he would not have to pay any additional tax to the imperial court! In other words, only when he made a total profit of thirty thousand strings of coins in five months would he be able to use up the tax exemption of a thousand strings of coins that he received from the fundraising event!
But in reality, there were very few merchants in the entire Tang Dynasty who could make a profit of thirty thousand strings of coins in five months. In other words, even though the merchant from another county who donated a thousand strings of coins received a tax exemption of a thousand strings of coins, he would not be able to use up this tax exemption because his profits in five months were likely to be only ten thousand strings of coins or less!
In this way, the imperial court's actual loss of tax from this merchant was only one out of thirty of ten thousand strings of coins, which was around three hundred strings of coins or less!
But the Lantian County merchant who donated a thousand strings of coins was different. According to the tax collection rate of one out of six in Lantian County, as long as his total profit in the next five months of the year could reach six thousand strings of coins, he would be able to use up the entire tax exemption of a thousand strings of coins! At this time, the Lantian County's official loss of business tax from this merchant was a solid one thousand strings of string of coins, without any discount!
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