Chapter 768, Fifteen Years Later

Imperial calendar, 10262.

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

The star port system of Lingze Star was really well built, even from Yang Shiwei's perspective, it was quite outstanding.

Of course, it couldn't be compared with Holy Terra, and how many places in the world could be compared with Holy Terra?

However, compared with many other places in the Empire with well-built star ports, Lingze Star was also one of the best.

What was even more precious was that all of this was built within fifteen years.

Yang Shiwei witnessed with his own eyes how this planet became prosperous today.

In any case, he had to applaud the Alliance.

Earlier, Lingze Star was the place for the transfer of taxes to the Empire. The star port infrastructure, which was actually quite good, seemed a little insufficient under the inevitable increase in the scale of tax transfer. After consultation with the alliance, the empire agreed to pay a certain amount of money to build Lingze Star, at least to make the infrastructure of this planet meet the requirements of paying imperial 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 to build their own territory, so what's wrong with that?

Some local forces will make good use of this money and take advantage of the opportunity to invest all of it in construction and gain benefits in the long run;

Some are short-sighted and will use their brains on this money and use various means to make a fortune. In general, the empire will turn a blind eye to this situation. There will be some redundancy in the allocation, cutting corners a little and making some money. As long as it doesn't delay the main business and can make the construction of Lingze Star reach the minimum standard, it will be fine.

The worst thing is to make too much money in it, and the construction is all face-saving projects, which actually do not meet the needs at all, so that it will affect the handover of imperial taxes later.

Yang Shiwei brought an entire audit team, which included not only the civil servants from the Taxation Department and the Government Affairs Department, but also the people from the Legal Department and even the anti-corruption personnel seconded by the Tribunal. This entire team was to prevent the last situation from happening.

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

It's not that they didn't think about the money, on the contrary, they did a lot. But unlike what was generally expected, they didn't make money from it, but tried their best to increase investment in it.

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

Not only the Alliance Government, but also the Tangu Star Region Government and the Alliance official have tried their best to raise funds. Although the resources raised by a star field are certainly not as much as the money given by the central government of the empire and the central government of the alliance, it is still a considerable amount for them.

The team led by Yang Shiwei found that there was nothing to audit. The investment of the alliance in Lingze Star far exceeded their initial estimate, so much so that 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 field, their goal is to take advantage of the huge business opportunities brought by the huge amount of material exchange when the imperial tax is paid.

The people of the empire and the alliance who deliver the goods need food, drink, and entertainment, which are all available in the space city;

A large number of ships are coming in and out of Lingze Star, and the corresponding ship maintenance, supply, fuel processing and other services are all available.

All of these can make money.

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

Even after the scale of the trade center developed, a series of financial mechanisms were established.

The alliance paid in kind in tax coins, and there was no problem with the amount. The empire did collect everything as long as it was on the list specified by the tax department.

But the pricing of items in the imperial tax list was fixed, and generally lower than the real value in the market.

These two factors alone are enough to play with, and there is a lot of room for arbitrage.

The most direct way is that the alliance’s own, external, and even caravans from Holy Terra will directly come to Lingze Star with a large amount of tax coins to do business. Before the alliance and the imperial tax department deliver taxes, the alliance’s warehouses will be "looted". Tax coins, as tokens, can be directly offset against imperial taxes. They can just use 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 bid was indeed just a little higher than the imperial tax price, after all, it was a bulk commodity; later, as more merchants competed, they had to pay more, so that in the end it was relatively dynamic balance.

For the Imperial Taxation Department, this is no problem. They have collected enough taxes. If they collect tax coins, it means that other places have made up for the taxes. Anyway, they will not lose money. In fact, many businesses are simply done by the Taxation Department.

Who is not making money?

It is not only them who are making money. Who among the Chamber of Commerce and Caravans coming to Holy Terra does not have a background? They all want to make money!

The profit from the price difference alone is enough to make a lot of money!

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

The Empire's pricing is static, but the market is dynamic, which means that the prices of some scarce materials are not actually reflected. For example, food is not of high value, 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 at 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 arms are really good quality and cheap.

Ships, consumer industrial products... all can be viewed in the same way.

On top of these two direct arbitrage environments, some more advanced financial games have evolved, such as futures... This is a bit out of touch with reality, and the Alliance is controlling this.

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

Later on, trade with the Alliance and the Central Empire was still one aspect. The various universes and star regions in the Eastern Frontier, Northern Frontier, and Central Territory of the Empire all heard the news and gradually gathered here to do business specifically on Lingze Star.

Merchants came to Lingze Star with a huge amount of tax coins and a huge amount of materials.

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 extracts a little bit of "insignificant" management fees from them.

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

The more prosperous it is, the more scale effect it will form.

All these factors combined have almost made Lingze Star the newly emerged and most prosperous trade center in the entire Eastern Territory.

The Alliance has made an unknown amount of money from it.

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

It's really jaw-dropping.

And the benefits may not be just that.

With such a large scale of trade and profit, it is not only Lingze Star that benefits, but also many other places in the Tangu Star Region can also get very big benefits.

Until now, Yang Shiwei still doesn't understand why the Alliance did not take a penny of the money that the Empire used to build Lingze Star fifteen years ago, but instead gritted its teeth and invested two or three times the funds to build Lingze Star?

The return is simply explosive!

Can it be replicated in other places?

I'm afraid it's not possible.

Other universes are still losing a lot of tax revenue, and they can't even collect taxes. How can it be easy to build a trading center with a foundation of several trillion?

What's more, the Empire has invested 500 billion tax coins in the past 15 years in the infrastructure construction of Lingze Star. Not to mention, the central government of the Alliance has invested more than 1.5 trillion; Tangu Star Region has also planned more than 1 trillion.

Three trillion is here, which of those ordinary universes can afford it?

Yang Shiwei can only say that it's awesome.

The Alliance was able to create this opportunity, seize this opportunity, and have enough resources to build it... I have to admire it.

Counting, it has been 18 years since the Battle of Reyaduches, which marked the end of the Iron Armor War and the Zerg War, ended; it has been 15 years since the signing of the "Alliance Plan".

During these 15 years, Lingze Star has been the place where the central government of the Empire and the Alliance conduct tax transactions, and Yang Shiwei has worked here for a long time.

As a deacon of the Empire's Tax Department, he is the confidant of Prime Minister Xu Fuzhen.

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

For others, as a central official, he had to go to the local area every day. It took ten months to go from Holy Terra to Lingze Star. It was really hard, and it was not a good thing to leave the central political arena of the empire and the center of power for a long time.

But Yang Shiwei knew that this was his stepping stone.

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

This is indeed the case.

In the following fifteen years, he has been conscientious, mainly because the alliance has cooperated very well, which is quite worry-free, and there has been no problem with the delivery of taxes.

And he himself was promoted a few years ago, from the chief deacon to the senior chief deacon.

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

Moreover, 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, Xu Fuzhen praised his work achievements over the past fifteen years, and at the same time, he also made a further promise for him: in two years, he can be promoted to the position of deputy minister of the Imperial Taxation Department.

That means he can be ranked in the top ten in the Taxation Department.

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

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

Can taxes be increased at will?

The "Alliance Plan" clearly states in black and white that it is 2.1 trillion.

This is a "tax package", a fixed amount.

Oh, now you see that the Alliance has developed well, not only is it strong internally, but it can earn one trillion a year just by relying on Lingze Star, and you think that the tax amount was set too low when it was set that year.

What did you do before?

Back then, when Yang Shiwei hadn't come yet, he heard a lot of things on Holy Terra.

The general meaning is that after the Alliance tax rate has been raised to this point, what can the Alliance do to rebel?

I have already collected 100% of the tax, how can he still have money to support the rebels?

Now, I find that things are not like this at all, so I want to change the rules and increase taxes fiercely.

Is this reasonable?

Of course, it doesn't matter whether it is reasonable or not.

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

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

Raising taxes is definitely beneficial to the central government of the empire, but will the alliance agree?

Obviously it is impossible to agree.

Then do we have to fight?

Yang Shiwei is a senior official of the Ministry of Taxation and is also in charge of the alliance's money. He knows clearly that after fifteen years, the money given by the alliance each year accounts for 6-11% of the total tax revenue collected by the central government of the empire from the local areas.

This is a huge number.

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

Can the empire afford to go to the point of turning the table with the alliance?

There is no need for war. As long as the two sides decouple, it will be fatal.

In terms of taxation, if the income is reduced by 6%-11%, many projects in many departments will be suspended.

Without the business of Lingze Star, many bigwigs in the central government of the empire who are making a lot of money there will lose money.

Can the central government of the empire afford these two things alone?

Then, even if it is a hard decoupling, what can the empire do to the alliance?

Go to war?

There is no way to start a war at all.