성황의 아이들 [3]

417

417. Seongjin Lee's Exploration Journal (6)

Horsepower tax.

The origin of this historic tax dates back to the 5th era of prosperity.

Even after the founding of the Holy Empire Delcross, there was no other country on the continent with a strong centralized system. In other words, it was a time when the power of local lords was sky-high.

At that time, the lord was truly an omnipotent being next to the god. To them, the concept of 'social contract' was nothing more than the nonsense of philosophers who had no idea about the world.

Everything in the territory belongs to the lord, and all power is also in the lord's hands. Therefore, checking what they had and imposing ingenious taxes on it was a natural routine, like a businessman writing ledgers and counting money.

Lords devised various ways to raise taxes to increase their wealth. Typical examples were fishing tax, hunting tax, reservoir tax, and river inflow tax. If you want to hunt and farm on your land, isn't it natural to pay a reasonable fee?

Also, some lords came up with the groundbreaking idea of ​​imposing more taxes on those who had more. So they started imposing taxes on things that were considered 'luxury' goods.

These are things like the 'stove tax' in the North, where taxes are levied by counting the number of stoves, and the 'window tax' in the South, where taxes are calculated based on the number of windows.

However, even to such lords, merchants were very ambiguous beings. Not only are they not Young Ji-min, but the items they sell are also not theirs. Therefore, there was no clear justification or standard for imposing taxes.

-Anyway, shouldn't they collect the amount of money they profit from my land?

So, at first, the lords collected a 'carriage tax' that set a tax per carriage. The idea was that it wouldn't be fair for a guy who sells a lot of stuff to walk a lot.

However, soon after the trend of levying the carriage tax spread across the continent, merchants blinded by profit began doing scandalous things. Aren't they starting to build bigger and bigger wagons to try to reduce reasonable taxes?

-Such terrible things... ... .

So, the next thing that started to be implemented was the 'wagon weight tax'. The principle was simple. The question is, shouldn't taxes be levied based on the amount of goods loaded?

The problem is that the measurements were not uniform for each territory, and pulling out each item and measuring its weight was quite a daunting task.

-Master! There is a ridiculous shortage of collectors!

-The goods were damaged while being weighed, so the merchants demanded compensation in front of the castle gate-!

Then, the lords calculated the floor area of ​​the carriage and began levying a 'carriage area tax.' Although it was inconvenient for the collectors to have to carry a tape measure around with them, it goes without saying that the work became much easier compared to the hard work of measuring weight.

However, as soon as the 'wagon area tax' was properly established, merchants once again caused problems. Those idiots who don't know what to do have now created a deformed carriage with high pavement and reduced floor space as much as possible.

Tax revenues show no signs of increasing, and carriages with unstable turning radius frequently cause rollover accidents.

At this point, the lords also threw up their hands and feet. Consistency is a thing, so I just decided to walk the way I wanted to.