Ming Dynasty: I am truly not the Emperor of Longevity

In the morning, Lu Chen asked Shen Baihu to show him around the customs office, the customs gate, and also to the Linqing tax bureau office across the street.

I got to know Cui Yan, the sixth-rank official in the Ministry of Revenue, and we exchanged pleasantries.

I also visited several departments that I frequently need to interact with to get to know the people there.

These were all things Lu Chen had to do every time he joined a new company before he transmigrated.

In the afternoon, Lu Chen did not continue to delay Shen Baihu from handling official business. Instead, he strolled around the Baihu Office and the Tax Bureau Office, chatting with the clerks he encountered.

I gained a general understanding of how these two government offices operated and the tax revenue of this customs office.

This was one of the most important customs posts in the entire Ming Empire, collecting approximately 80,000 to 120,000 taels of silver in taxes annually.

The annual tax revenue in the mid-Ming Dynasty, converted into silver, was approximately between 20 million and 25 million taels.

During the Jiajing reign, the Single Whip Law had not yet been implemented. Only about 40% of the taxes were in silver, while the rest were in-kind taxes.

Agricultural taxes account for as much as 70% of all tax revenue.

Of the remaining 30%, the majority came from salt tax and corvée labor compensation, which was essentially a substitute payment for service.

The two main sources of commercial tax in the Ming Dynasty were customs duties and maritime trade duties.

The Maritime Trade Office originally had three branches: Ningbo, Quanzhou, and Guangzhou. However, at this time, only Guangzhou was still operating normally, with annual customs duties amounting to only about 100,000 taels, similar to the Linqing Customs.

The seven major customs offices, including Linqing, Yangzhou, and Jiujiang, had an annual revenue of approximately 300,000 to 400,000 taels of silver.

The amount of money exchanged at the Linqing Customs alone reached 80,000 to 120,000 taels, accounting for more than a quarter of the total, which was quite high.

The total commercial tax revenue of the entire Ming Dynasty was a mere 500,000 taels of silver per year!

This business tax is pitifully low!

However, Lu Chen did not believe that the actual amount of commercial tax collected by the Ming Dynasty in a year was only that much.

If that's really the case, the business environment in this era is definitely much better than it appears.

It was the seventh month of the lunar calendar, a crucial period for the Ming Dynasty's "Autumn Transport" campaign.

The grain transported from the south was carried northward in batches via the Grand Canal, with the aim of arriving in Tongzhou before September.

Lu Chen had already seen a serious "ship jam" at the customs office that morning.

I inquired around this afternoon and found out that about two hundred ships pass through the customs every day recently, about half of which are grain transport ships belonging to the imperial court.

These ships are naturally not subject to taxes.

Of the remaining half, official and civilian ships carrying passengers accounted for about 30%, while the remaining 70% were merchant ships.

Lu Chen had personally witnessed that most of the merchant ships had very deep drafts and were almost fully loaded.

Their load capacity was generally between 400 and 500 shi (a unit of dry measure). One shi in the Ming Dynasty was approximately 89 kilograms, which translates to 35 to 45 tons in later times.

As for what kind of cargo was on the ship, Lu Chen also found out.

The two minor officials were trembling with fear before him, a seventh-rank Jinyiwei captain in official robes, and answered whatever questions he asked.

These merchant ships from the Jiangnan region were mainly loaded with Songjiang cotton cloth, Suzhou and Hangzhou silk, Jingdezhen porcelain, as well as sugar, paper, and the like.

The value of each shipment ranged from one or two thousand taels to four or five thousand taels.

The tax revenue source of the tax bureau is these approximately seventy merchant ships every day, which can bring in about four hundred taels of silver in taxes.

On average, each ship would only receive five or six taels of silver.

That tax rate is too low, only about 0.2%!