The salt tax looked simple enough.
Salt was the best tool for taxing commoners in ancient times, bar none.
Everyone needed salt. As long as one monopolized the salt fields, one could levy taxes by selling the right to purchase salt.
That was what a salt license was. With a salt license, you could buy salt and then sell it in designated areas.
That was the theory, but in practice, there was far too much room for manipulation.
It was only through the Hero Network that the Emperor saw clearly how those below had been deceiving him.
For instance, salt fields could increase production. As long as the salt could be sold, the scale of operations would gradually expand, more hands would be hired, and their skills would improve.
Yet the total number of salt licenses sold was still set at the level of several decades ago, and naturally, the taxes collected remained fixed at the quotas of several decades ago.
No one would ever tell the Emperor that.
The officials certainly would not waste the extra salt for nothing.
After it was sold, the salt merchants would give them a hefty sum of silver to take in the salt and resell it.
And that was merely a loophole in theory.
In other words, a salt license worth one tael of silver could actually allow a salt merchant to buy salt worth three taels, even five or ten taels! How much tax had leaked away because of that? Seeing this, the Emperor was so angry that he laughed.
So from top to bottom, he was the only fool.
But then again, how could his own diligent heart possibly overcome the greed of the entire official class?
He only had twelve two-hour periods in a day, while they spent every day