travel through the past to be emperor

Chapter 153 Go and close the door

From the perspective of a third party, Zhao Fei could clearly feel the disagreement between his two ministers.

Although the family and everything are happy, Zhao Fei did not intervene to reconcile the conflict between the two. After all, Zhao Fei deliberately indulged the two into what they are now.

As for the reason, it is still the same old saying, if the subordinates are huddled together, as long as the subordinates are willing, they can make the leader blind anytime and anywhere.

"Your Majesty, all the affairs of the Cuju competition have been prepared." Wang Qinian walked over at this time and said slowly.

"Are you ready?" Zhao Fei was stunned for a moment, and said, "The date has also been set? When will it start?"

"The date is undecided." Wang Qinian shook his head and said, "I asked Qin Tian to monitor a few good days, and I specially brought them here for His Majesty to see which day will be good."

"Which days? Let me see." Zhao Fei said.

Wang Qinian made preparations early, took out a memorial from his sleeve and handed it to Zhao Fei, saying, "Your Majesty, please read it."

Zhao Fei took the memorial, quickly read those few days, pointed to the first day and said: "That's it."

"Three days later?" Wang Qinian asked in a daze.

"Is there a problem?" Zhao Fei asked back.

"No problem." Wang Qinian immediately shook his head, and pondered, "It's just that this day is too urgent."

"It's better to be sooner rather than later, and it's an auspicious day, so I think it's good." Zhao Fei closed the memorial and handed it back to Wang Qinian, saying, "If there's nothing wrong with you, this day will be fine."

"Of order." Wang Qinian took back the memorial, nodded, and then asked, "Will His Majesty go there on the day of the match?"

"Let's watch the time." Zhao Fei pondered for a while and then said, "If I have time that day, I will go and have a look."

"I understand." Wang Qinian said and retreated.

Afterwards, Lin Wanrong came up and said, "Your Majesty, all the envoys from the island countries in the East China Sea left Chang'an yesterday."

"I see." Zhao Fei nodded and said, "Have you sent someone to escort you?"

"Escorted." Lin Wanrong said after being stunned for a moment.

The so-called escort is definitely not a real escort. In a sense, it is also a different kind of escort.

According to reports from Jinyiwei's follower, these islanders are not so quiet in Chang'an City, and seem to have been doing some small tricks in private.

However, since the imperial court has just signed an agreement with them, and at the same time, the imperial court must pay attention to the demeanor of a great country, so the Jinyiwei people did not dare to stare too much at it, so Zhao Fei only knew that these envoys were making small moves, but he didn't know what they wanted. do what.

Fortunately, Zhao Fei asked Lin Wanrong to steal which tavern he took someone to copy last time and it did work, so judging from various sources, no one has the guts to do business with the islanders.

Zhao Fei knows that no one is doing it now, but it doesn't mean that no one will do it in the future. After all, once the market for spices is opened up, the profits will be very eye-catching.

Although the imperial court has the exclusive right, some people dare to take the risk of smuggling in the face of high profits.

All Zhao Fei is doing now is to occupy an absolute monopoly position in the market before the spices completely enter the market.

Now that these people have gone back, when we see them again, it will be the time when the imperial court makes the first transaction with them.

Just mentioning the spices, Zhao Fei was a little unhappy. After all, Hai Dafu hadn't been found yet, and Zhao Fei couldn't tell why the old eunuch fled. This incident cast a shadow over Zhao Fei's heart.

However, what made Zhao Fei even more unhappy was that Zhao Zilong came up to him so desperately, and reported to Zhao Fei the current financial situation of the imperial court.

"There's no money in the treasury again?" Zhao Fei looked at Zhao Zilong in surprise. To be honest, since the court's collection of donations started, Zhao Fei hasn't worried about the court's lack of money for a long time.

But now, as soon as the donation was received, Zhao Zilong came to say that the treasury had no money, so Zhao Fei couldn't help thinking about it, whether he was giving me eye drops, or supporting Liu Yong.

Zhao Zilong didn't know what Zhao Fei was thinking, so he said truthfully, "Your Majesty, there is still some surplus in the national treasury, but..."

"Just what?" Zhao Fei asked.

"It's just that when Mr. Sha Huwei went to Hebei Road, he took a lot of cash from his ministers." Zhao Zilong said: "Your Majesty said during the court meeting that day that for the affairs of Hebei Road, you need money and people. So Lord Sha came to the household department to ask for money, and I gave it to him, but I didn't think about the treasury's inventory at the time, and I didn't find out that the treasury was out of money until yesterday when I checked the accounts."

"I remember that there is a lot of surplus in the treasury, right?" Zhao Fei said, "How much money did Sha Huwei take to empty the treasury?"

"Master Sha didn't take much money. He just took Hebei Province's official salaries for this year and the next batch of disaster relief funds that the imperial court plans to allocate to Hebei Province." There is some income, and the money is not important. Now that the donations have stopped, the income is gone. The minister didn't realize it for a while, so he sent out the salaries of the court officials for this month, and the treasury was suddenly empty. "

Since the last time Beijing officials made trouble, in order to appease public anger, Zhao Fei decided that the Ministry of Households would distribute salaries to incumbent Beijing officials every month, changing the previous annual salary system to a monthly salary system.

At that time, the imperial court had some money, so this little reform did not show much, but now that the imperial court has no income, the household department suddenly seems a little stretched.

"Doesn't the Ministry of Households have any income?" Zhao Fei asked in surprise: "Now that the collection of donations has filled a lot of vacancies in the national treasury, the treasury is still short of money, but if there were no donations at that time, your household department still needed it." Do you have a job?"

"This..." Zhao Zilong said in a muffled voice: "Your Majesty, the Ministry of Household Affairs used to use this year's budget for next year's budget, and basically deducted all the expenses of the imperial court, so under such a throttling, the imperial court can barely It’s just that the expenses this year are too high to maintain the operation, and the household department can’t afford it at all!”

"Okay." Zhao Fei looked at Zhao Zilong helplessly, and said, "Then what can you do about the current situation?"

Zhao Zilong looked at Zhao Fei with a confused face.

Well, just looking at Zhao Zilong's expression, Zhao Fei knew there was nothing this guy could do.

As for the income of the imperial court, Zhao Fei once had an in-depth understanding of it. Now there are two main types of income for the imperial court, one is taxation, and the other is the annual benefits generated by the state-owned assets controlled by the imperial court.

The main source of this tax is the poll tax, which is a land tax added to the land, mainly collected from the farmers of the Song State, and another type is the commercial tax. Although the business of the Song State is very developed, Zhao Fei was disappointed that, The money received by the entire imperial court from merchants every year is not as much as the money received by Chang'an City from farmers in Chang'an.

As for the other source of the treasury, that is the income generated by the assets owned by the imperial court. This type of income mainly comes from the income generated by the land and forests, as well as the income from the salt and iron franchise and the mining of gold and silver mineral resources. In one aspect, the imperial court's income is very high, but only one tenth of this income will be included in the national treasury, and nine of them will be divided among the royal family, princes from various places, and officials at all levels.

For the second category of state-owned assets, because on the one hand too many people are involved, on the other hand, as the emperor, he is the main beneficiary, so there is no way to reform it for the time being.

But for the first category, Zhao Fei has many ideas, the most important of which is commercial tax.

In ancient times, it was the general consensus of the whole society to emphasize agriculture and despise commerce, so the imperial court has always only paid attention to agriculture and not to commerce.

Everyone knows that businessmen have money, but no one wants to be a businessman unless it is absolutely necessary, at least in this era.

Because of their low commercial status, no matter how rich they are, in the eyes of the masses, their status is not comparable to that of any farmer facing the loess.

This social consensus of low status has led to the whole society not paying attention to this rich group.

As far as the imperial court is concerned, the most direct impact is that the imperial court has not yet established a commercial management department, and no officials are willing to deal with these businessmen, because officials are afraid that if they deal too much with businessmen, it will arouse people's criticism.

This somewhat distorted concept leads directly to another situation.

That is, when collecting commercial taxes, the Ministry of Household Affairs usually randomly selects a few small officials from below to act as tax officials and let them come and go to deal with businessmen.

Although these tax officials say that they are not officials, they are not small. In order to avoid dealing with businessmen, these people basically act sloppily, and they are satisfied with doing things instead of doing things well.

Of course, there are even some tax officials who enrich their private pockets on a large scale in the process of collecting taxes because they know that they have no hope of getting ahead in this life.

This kind of distorted mentality eventually led to the serious tax evasion and evasion of Song Dynasty. To put it simply, few merchants pay taxes.

As for businessmen, many people don't even know that there is a commercial tax in the imperial court.

Zhao Fei once asked Liu Ruyun about commercial tax, and the answer he got surprised Zhao Fei.

Liu Meizhi looked at Zhao Fei with a confused face and asked: What is commercial tax?
After Zhao Fei explained the relevant regulations on commercial tax, Liu Meizhi said in a daze, "It turns out that you have to pay tax when you are in business. Why has no one told me for so long!"

At that time, I asked Liu Ruyun how the tofu shop opened, and whether it had been filed with the government.

Ms. Liu said that after she bought this small courtyard, she chose an auspicious day and opened the store. As for the people from the government, Liu Ruyun said that she had never seen them before.

At that time, Zhao Fei felt that the government of Song Dynasty was strange!
Since that day, Zhao Fei has had an idea running in his mind, that is to set up a department dedicated to business management.

At this moment, seeing Zhao Zilong and other court officials' despondent appearances, Zhao Fei frowned and said, "Anping, go and close the door, take someone to look around, I want to discuss matters with some adults."

(End of this chapter)