Chapter 768, 5 Year Later

Chapter 768, Fifteen Years Later

Imperial calendar, year 10262.

Yang Shiwei was standing by the ship's porthole, admiring everything in front of him.

The star port system of Lingze Star is very well constructed. Even from the perspective of Yang Shiwei, who is used to the world, it is quite outstanding.

Of course it can't be compared with Holy Terra. How many places in this world can be compared with Holy Terra?
However, compared with many other places in the empire with well-built star ports, Lingze Star is also one of the best.

What is even more rare and valuable is that all of this was built within fifteen years.

Yang Shiwei has witnessed with his own eyes how this planet has grown to its current prosperity.

Regardless, he applauds the alliance.

In the past, Lingze Star was used as the transfer site for the Empire's taxes. The star port infrastructure was actually quite good, but it was not enough as the scale of tax transfer was bound to grow. After negotiations with the Alliance, the Empire agreed to pay a certain amount of money to build Lingze Star, at least to make the planet's infrastructure meet the requirements for paying the Empire's taxes.

According to Yang Shiwei's understanding, the general local forces should be satisfied at this point: they got a sum of money from the central government of the empire for free and used it to build their own territories, so what's wrong with that?
Some local forces will make good use of this money, take advantage of the opportunity, invest it all into construction, and reap the benefits in the long run;

Some people are short-sighted and will use their brains to make a fortune with the money by various means. In general, the empire will turn a blind eye to this situation. The funding will be more or less redundant, and cutting corners and making some money is fine as long as it does not affect the main work and can make the construction of Lingze Star reach the minimum standard.

The worst thing is that they made too much money from it. The construction they carried out was all face-saving projects, but in fact did not meet the needs at all, which later affected the handover of imperial taxes.

Yang Shiwei brought an entire audit team, which included not only people from the taxation department and the government affairs department who were responsible for clerical work, but also people from the legal department and even anti-corruption personnel seconded from the trial court. This entire team was designed to prevent the last situation from happening.

However, after fifteen years of investigation, no illegal behavior was found on Lingze Star, including the local officials of the Tangu Star Region to which Lingze Star belongs.

It's not that they didn't think about this money, on the contrary, they thought about it a lot. But unlike what people expected, they didn't try to make money from it, but tried every way to increase their investment.

The huge sum of money invested by the Empire was enough to build Lingze Star to support the material exchange of more than 2 trillion tax coins per year. But the Alliance was obviously not satisfied with this. In the past fifteen years, it invested an amount of money in Tangu Star Region that was similar to the Empire's investment, which was used to build Lingze Star's star port system and various infrastructures inside the planet.

Not only the Alliance Government, but also the Tangu Star Region Government and the Alliance official tried their best to raise funds. Although the resources raised by a star region were certainly not as much as the money given by the Empire Central and the Alliance Central, it was still a considerable amount for them.

The team led by Yang Shiwei found that they had nothing to audit. The alliance's investment in Lingze Star far exceeded their initial estimates, and many

With so many resources accumulated, the results of the construction of Lingze Star are quite gratifying.

Complete the delivery of the imperial tax?

No, no, no, this is just the lowest standard.

Whether it is the Alliance Government or the Tangu Star Region, their goal is to take advantage of the huge business opportunities brought about by the huge exchange of materials when the imperial tax is paid.

The personnel of the Empire and the Alliance who delivered the goods needed food, drink and entertainment, which could be found in the space city.
A large number of ships come in and out of Lingze Star, and corresponding services such as ship maintenance, supplies, and fuel processing are all available.

All of these can make money.

Not to mention, the Tangu government also built a trade center here to facilitate the caravans coming from the central territory of the empire. They can travel with the imperial tax fleet and come to Lingze Star to trade with the alliance.

Even after the trade center grew in size, a series of financial mechanisms were established.

The Alliance pays in kind, denominated in tax currency, and there is no problem with the amount. The Empire does collect everything, as long as it is on the list specified by the Ministry of Taxation.

But the prices of items in the imperial tax lists were fixed and generally lower than their true market value.

These two factors alone are enough to create a lot of fun and provide a lot of room for arbitrage.

The most direct way is that the Alliance's own, external, and even caravans from Holy Terra will come to Lingze Star with a large amount of tax coins to do business. Before the Alliance and the Imperial Tax Department exchange taxes, they will first "loot" the Alliance's warehouses. Tax coins can be used as tokens to directly offset the Imperial tax. They can just use the tax coins to directly purchase the Alliance's goods. As long as the bid is higher than the tax price, the Alliance will not only pay the tax, but also have extra income.

At the beginning, their bids only had to be slightly higher than the imperial tax price, after all, it was a bulk commodity; later, as more competing merchants emerged, they had to pay a little more, until finally a relative dynamic balance was reached.

For the Imperial Taxation Department, this was no problem. They collected enough taxes, and it was OK if the tax coins were collected. That meant that other places had made up for the taxes, so they didn't lose money anyway. In fact, many businesses were taken care of by the Taxation Department on their own initiative.

Who doesn’t make money?

It's not just them who are making money. Who among the merchant guilds and caravans coming to Holy Terra doesn't have a background? They all want to make money!
The profit from the price difference alone is enough to make a fortune!

This is just the factor that tax pricing is lower than market pricing.

The empire's pricing is fixed, but the market is dynamic, which means that the prices of some scarce materials are not actually reflected. For example, food is not valuable, but in many hive worlds that are in a state of famine, with a large population but insufficient agricultural production, a large amount of imported food is needed. At this time, even if the price of food can only be calculated based on the market price, it is still very cost-effective for these places with import demand.

For some places in a state of war, the alliance's weapons are really good value for money.

Ships, consumer industrial products...all can be viewed in a similar way.

On top of these two direct arbitrage environments, some more advanced financial gameplay has evolved, such as futures... This is somewhat detached from reality and moving towards virtuality, and the alliance is in charge of regulating this.

The alliance itself is using Lingze Star to conduct a large amount of trade, the two most important strategic imports being population and raw materials.

As things developed later, trade with the alliance and the central empire was still one aspect. All the cosmic domains and star fields in the eastern border, northern border, and central border of the empire heard the news and gradually gathered here, doing business specifically on Lingze Star.

The merchants came to Lingze Star with huge amounts of tax coins and supplies.

They not only do business with the alliance, but also with each other.

The alliance's trade center also manages all of these, and only charges a small "insignificant" management fee.

It is hard to find a place with such a complete infrastructure and such a large scale of trade. The clean, transparent, convenient and efficient management services of the Alliance are also rare in the entire universe.

The more prosperous it is, the greater the scale effect will be.

All these factors combined have almost made Lingze Star a newly emerging and most prosperous trade center in the entire eastern territory.

The alliance made an unknown amount of money from this.

Anyway, according to Yang Shiwei's team who had nothing to do in the audit, they tried to do some statistics and found that the money Lingze Star earned for the alliance, from direct trade profits, trade commissions, to income from the service industry, might be close to one trillion.

It's really jaw-dropping. And the benefits may not only go beyond that.

With such a large scale of trade and profits, not only Lingze Star will benefit, but many other places in the Tangu Star Region will also be able to gain huge benefits.

Until now, Yang Shiwei still doesn't understand why the Alliance not only did not take a penny of the money that the Empire gave to build Lingze Star fifteen years ago, but instead gritted its teeth and invested two or three times the amount of money, determined to build Lingze Star?
The rewards are simply explosive!
Can it be copied somewhere else?
I'm afraid it won't work.

Other universes are still suffering from huge tax losses and can't even collect taxes properly. How can it be easy to set up a trading center with a foundation of trillions?

What's more, the infrastructure of Lingze Star has cost the Empire 500 billion tax coins over the past 15 years, and the central government of the Alliance has invested more than 1.5 trillion. The Tangu Star Region itself has also allocated more than 1 trillion.

With three trillion dollars here, which of those ordinary universes can afford to build it?

All Yang Shiwei could say was: awesome.

The Alliance was able to create this opportunity, seize this opportunity, and have enough resources to build it... It's impossible not to admire it.

It has been eighteen years since the Battle of Reyaduches, which marked the end of the Iron War and the Zerg War; and fifteen years since the signing of the Alliance Plan.

During these fifteen years, Lingze Star served as the place where the central empire and the alliance conducted tax transactions, and Yang Shiwei worked here for a long time.

As a chief steward of the Imperial Taxation Department, he is Prime Minister Xu Fuzhen's confidant.

Fifteen years ago, he was specially sent here to be the person in charge of tax settlement with the alliance.

For others, as a central official, they have to travel to the local areas every day. It takes ten months to travel from Holy Terra to Lingze Star, which is really hard. Moreover, it is not a good thing to be away from the central political arena of the empire and the center of power for a long time.

But Yang Shiwei knew that this was a stepping stone for his advancement.

Prime Minister Xu Fuzhen attaches great importance to this money. If we work hard to ensure that this money can be delivered stably, it will be a great achievement.

that's the truth.

Over the next fifteen years, he has been working diligently, mainly because the alliance has cooperated very well and it has been very worry-free, and there has never been any problem with tax settlement.

As expected, he himself was promoted from chief deacon to senior chief deacon a few years ago.

This position is not low, and it is among the top 100 in the entire tax department.

What's more, this is not the end.

He recently traveled back and forth between Holy Terra and Lingze Star. When he returned this time, Prime Minister Xu Fuzhen specially called him in for a face-to-face interview.

First of all, Xu Fuzhen praised his work achievements over the past fifteen years. At the same time, she also painted a further rosy picture for him: in another two years, he could be promoted to the position of Deputy Minister of the Imperial Ministry of Taxation.

That means he can rank among the top ten in the tax department.

But at the same time, Xu Fuzhen also gave him a task: let him talk to the alliance about raising taxes before the fifteen-year deadline.

When Yang Shiwei first heard this request, he almost went numb.

Can taxes be increased at will?
The Alliance Plan clearly states in black and white that the amount is 2.1 trillion.

This is a 'tax inclusive', fixed amount.

Oh, now you see that the alliance is developing well. Not only is it strong internally, but it can earn one trillion a year just by relying on Lingze Star alone. You feel that the tax amount was set too low back then.

Why did you go early?
Back then, before Yang Shiwei came, he heard a lot of opinions on Holy Terra.

The general meaning is that after the alliance's tax rate has been raised to this level, how can the alliance still rebel?
I have already collected 100% tax, how can he still have money to support the rebels?

Now, having discovered that things are not as they should be, they want to change the rules and increase taxes drastically.

Does this make sense?

Of course, it doesn’t matter whether it makes sense or not.

The imperial central government has been unreasonable many times, and this time is no exception.

However, whether or not to be reasonable, in addition to face and bottom line, which can be discarded at any time, there are at least two key factors: strength and pros and cons.

Raising taxes would definitely be beneficial to the central empire, but would the alliance agree?

Obviously it is impossible to agree to this.

So do we have to confront it?

Yang Shiwei was a senior official in the taxation department, and was in charge of the alliance's money. He knew clearly that over the past fifteen years, the money given by the alliance each year accounted for 6-11% of the total tax revenue collected by the central government of the empire from the local areas.

That's a very large number.

A large number of expenditures of various imperial departments depend on this money.

Can the Empire afford to go toe-to-toe with the Alliance?

There is no need for war. It will be fatal if the two sides decouple.

In terms of taxation, if there is a loss of 6%-11% in revenue, many projects in many departments will have to be suspended.

Without the business of Lingze Star, many bigwigs in the central government of the empire who were making huge profits there would suffer losses.

Can the central government of the empire bear just these two things?
Then, even if there is a hard decoupling, what can the Empire do to the Alliance?
Start a war?

It can't be opened at all.

(End of this chapter)