Ming Dynasty: I am truly not the Emperor of Longevity

Even if you have to pass through several checkpoints on the way from Jiangnan to the capital, it will only cost twenty or thirty taels of silver.

It is negligible in terms of the value of the entire shipment.

Hiring such a merchant ship from Suzhou to the capital, including the wages of several boatmen and the cost of food along the way, would only cost a few dozen taels of silver.

Even with taxes, it wouldn't exceed one hundred taels.

If that's the case, then the logistics costs for transporting goods from the south to the north can be kept very low.

But why did I see in some historical records that goods from Jiangnan were 70-80% more expensive in the capital during the Ming Dynasty, or even doubled?

If it's true that unscrupulous merchants deliberately sell at high prices, it's possible for some rare items, since the prices aren't transparent and it's hard to find other places to compare.

However, it's unreasonable that some bulk commodities, such as Songjiang cotton cloth, can be priced so much higher.

The logistics costs along the way were clearly less than five percent, so the fact that the price in the capital was three or four percent higher than in the Jiangnan region was already considered a huge profit.

These commodities have huge shipment volumes, and no single merchant can monopolize them.

If you sell at a high price, other businesses will naturally steal your business by selling at a lower profit margin.

The fact that such an unreasonable price appears in historical records can only mean one thing!

That is, the actual cost of merchant ships traveling from the Jiangnan region to the capital along the Grand Canal was much higher than what was publicly stated!

How much are these extra costs that seem to have appeared out of nowhere?

Commodities that cannot be exclusively monopolized and sold in the capital can only yield a profit of about 20% to 30% after deducting all costs. If you want to sell them for more, someone will lower the price and steal your business.

In other words, goods sold at a markup of 80% to 100% in the capital would have an actual cost that was 40% to 50% higher when they arrived at the capital's warehouses than when they originated from the Jiangnan region.

It's ten times higher than the less than 5% logistics cost on the surface!

This is still compared with all logistics costs, including personnel expenses. If we only compare it with the taxes collected by the several customs checkpoints along the way, it would be thirty times more!

On the Grand Canal, a waterway flowing with gold, the Ming Dynasty court received only one-thirtieth of the commercial taxes that merchants actually spent!

In other words, during the peak season for merchant ships passing through in the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the amount of silver actually remaining at the Linqing Customs every day is not the mere four hundred taels paid to the Ministry of Revenue!

Although the exact details of the operation are unknown, the actual figure may have reached a terrifying 12,000 taels!

Of course, this is the busiest season for logistics all year round, with daily revenue more than double the annual average, but even so, the daily figure should still be over five thousand taels.

Nearly two million taels of silver brought in by merchant ships throughout the year remained in Linqing!

So, whose pockets did all that money end up in?

The cargo owner can control the boatman's salary and meals.

The silver collected by the customs and delivered to the Ministry of Revenue was also clearly accounted for.

The extra money that the cargo owners have to pay is probably just the various fees that the customs offices along the way have been charging under all sorts of pretexts!

Lu Chen didn't know exactly who had divided the money, but he was certain that his own Jinyiwei Customs Office and the tax bureau across the street had received a significant share.

Of course, neither of the two government offices could keep all the money for themselves. On the Jinyiwei side, not only would everyone in the entire Linqing Thousand-Household Office receive a share, but the Jinyiwei government office in the capital would also naturally not be left out.

The same applies to the tax collection offices; a large portion of the revenue must be used to bribe and pay tribute to officials in the capital.

Lu Chen estimated that half of the silver ultimately sent from Linqing to the capital would be accounted for.

That is approximately one million taels of silver.

The remaining one million taels will probably be distributed locally in Linqing.

The tax collection offices and the Embroidered Uniform Guard naturally took the lion's share.

But there are also many big shots in Linqing, including not only the civil service system of the prefecture and county, but also the Linqing tax supervisor directly sent by the Directorate of Ceremonial.

These people also cannot be shortchanged.