Before the meeting of the Maritime Association was held in Jiale Hall the next day, Zhu Youzhen specially brought Zheng Zhilong, Yang Tiansheng, Xu Xinsu, Liu Peng and others over and held a small meeting first.

The few who were summoned by the emperor knew in their hearts that the emperor must have asked them to talk about the issue of ship tax. In fact, they are reluctant to accept a change on this issue, after all, these ship taxes are their largest income after private overseas trade.

Almost as soon as he sat down, Zheng Zhilong complained to Chongzhen: "Your Majesty, the minister thinks that the request made by those deputies yesterday is really too arrogant, and we are working hard to maintain and operate ports overseas, isn't it just to ensure that they can safely trade in these sea areas?"

Now that they have only been living in peace for a few days, they feel that the sea has been calm, and they don't need the existence of the imperial navy? This clearly wants to cross the river and tear down the bridge.

These merchants have always been of bad character, and for a little personal gain, they can even ask the Spaniards*, iron tools, medicinal herbs and other contraband to the people of the Ming Dynasty. The minister thought that the opinions of these merchants were completely ignored. If they think the ship tax is too high, they can just go out to sea, so why bother to bother themselves? ”

Zheng Zhilong's opinion obviously spoke to the hearts of these deputies, that is, a few people who had always shown that they did not get along with him did not speak out against it, but echoed a few words.

After listening to the opinions of these deputies, Zhu Youzhen spoke: "Yesterday, I went back and thought about it all night, and I also had a preliminary idea on the issue of ship tax.

It is true that you are right, the ship tax distributed to you has now become the construction cost of overseas ports and the Ming Navy. It was with the existence of these ports and ships that the maritime merchants of the Ming Dynasty could safely and freely sail on the sea and conduct their trade.

From this point of view, the collection of ship tax is reasonable, after all, maritime safety cannot fall from the sky, and it needs to be operated by the imperial court together with you. ”

For the emperor's thoughtfulness, the original dignified faces of the representatives present suddenly relaxed a lot, after all, not everyone has the luck of Zheng Zhilong, and there is already a relatively mature port in Taiwan. Most of us here need a steady stream of resources if we want to maintain the current situation of opening up new ports overseas.

The construction of a new port was obviously not something that could be sustained by their own profits from the maritime trade business, so that the military expenses paid by the imperial court and the ship tax allocated by the customs became their most stable income. They clearly cannot tolerate the cancellation of this proceeds and thus plunge themselves into financial ruin.

"But the ship tax, the ship tax, as the name suggests, can only collect the tax if we have the ship first. The ancients knew that they could not do things and fish without fixing them, and they had to release the water to raise fish in order to obtain greater benefits.

Therefore, these merchant representatives of the southeastern provinces are, to some extent, the fish that we will collect the ship tax on in the future, and if we do not feed the fish in the ponds, how can the fish multiply and grow

The Ming Dynasty owned at least 1,000 ships, but only about one-third of them were registered for tax at various customs ports. Other ships are still engaged in the smuggling trade, and if this situation continues, it will obviously be detrimental to the imperial court and to all of you.

Not to mention the vast expanse of the sea, it is difficult for us to catch these smuggling vessels, and the cost of this levy alone will greatly offset the new revenue we collect from the ship tax.

The tonnage of the current ships in the Ming Dynasty is less than 100,000 tons, and most of them are small boats of about 100 tons. In the long run, the tonnage of Daming's maritime transportation is far from sufficient, whether it is to transport raw materials from overseas, or to export Daming's products overseas, this tonnage can not meet the needs of Daming.

And don't forget that the new overseas port you are building now will only become meaningful if the number of ships docks increases, and a port without ships is a waste. ”

The delegates, who had originally made up their minds to oppose the change of the ship tax, suddenly hesitated, and their hearts that had just been firm now suddenly became a little confused.

After all, what they oppose is not the level of the tax on a single vessel, but the reduction of their share after adjusting the tax on ships. Chongzhen's words just hit their minds, so they started to think.

In the meeting hall of the Maritime Merchants Association in the main hall of the Jiale Palace, the remaining maritime representatives were waiting a little restlessly, and they also looked in the direction of the inner hall from time to time, as if they wanted to penetrate the wooden partition wall to see what extent the discussion was going inside.

After nearly an hour, there was finally some movement at the passage in the direction of the inner hall, and with the appearance of more than a dozen maritime leaders, and the emperor himself behind them, the representatives present suddenly subconsciously stood up to welcome the emperor's arrival.

After walking to his own special seat in the Jiale Hall and sitting down, Zhu Youzhen signaled that today's meeting was officially convened, and Lu Qi, who was originally standing beside him, hurriedly walked to the stage in the middle of the venue, and after looking around at the deputies seated on three sides, he said: "Your Majesty, the representative of the miscellaneous family, read out the answers to several questions such as yesterday's ship tax. After listening, if you have any questions, you can raise them immediately. ”

With Lu Qi's voice, everyone in the venue suddenly fell silent. Lu Qi waited for nearly half a minute, and only after the surroundings were quiet did he take out a piece of paper and read it with his head down: "Regarding the issue of ship tax collection, first of all, the purpose of ship tax collection is to maintain the safety of the waterway and the construction of facilities in various ports.

In order to protect the safe navigation of Ming merchant ships in the world, the imperial court had to build lighthouses in certain dangerous places, set up warning signs, that is, explore the hydrographic data of unknown waters, and also establish a maritime force to protect Ming commerce. His Majesty therefore considered that the levy of the ship tax was beyond doubt.

Of course, the indisputable nature of the ship tax is not the same as the level of the ship tax, and it is not allowed to be discussed. The setting of the ship tax should always take into account the cost of sailing overseas merchant ships, so that you should not lose money when conducting overseas trade.

Considering that the old method of collecting ship tax pointed out by the deputies is seriously inconsistent with the load of the ship, and the amount of tax is too arbitrary, there is a gap of two or three times the ship tax for ships of similar size, and the customs tax collectors are too tired of doing too much tricks in it.

His Majesty has therefore decided that, with effect from 1 April of this year, new measures and the collection of ship taxes and duties will be adopted at all customs ports. The new weights and measures will be introduced by the Ministry of Industry, so I won't talk about it here. The new tariff regulations will also be published, and you can go to customs office to buy a copy later, and there is no need to say more.

What the miscellaneous family wants to say is a ship tax standard, and in the future, the collection of ship tax will no longer use the measurement of the bow of the ship, but the tonnage system. Measured by the net tonnage of the ship...

All registered ships or newly built ships will be marked with tonnage details at customs in the future, and the bronze plaque of the ship's information must be installed in the obvious part of the vessel...

Moreover, all ships that take refuge and take refuge from storms; Fishing vessels and vessels under 30 tons are not required to pay the ship tax when they enter the port for the first time.

According to the different trading vessels, the ship tax is divided into two categories: domestic port trade and foreign port trade. According to the nationality of the vessels, they are divided into two categories: domestic ships and foreign ships.

First of all, foreign vessels are not allowed to operate in domestic port trade, but vessels employed by domestic shipping companies are not subject to this restriction, but must be registered. For ships that only trade between domestic ports, an annual fee system of 2 yuan per ton is adopted.

For ships engaged in overseas trade, the annual fee system: domestic ships below 200 tons are 10 yuan per ton of ships above tonnage. Half of the annual fee is charged for each entry and exit from the port.

As for the tonnage tax on foreign vessels, the increase is 50% for ships registered in Macao, and 100% for other vessels..."

Listening to Lu Qi reading the emperor's reply in a low tone on the table, the representatives of the southeast maritime merchants who raised the question also privately summed up the collection of ship tax in this way, in addition to the significant reduction of ships running north-south shipping, their ship tax expenditure was also reduced a lot.

Based on the calculation of the new standard cotton cloth in Beijing, each ton of cotton cloth plus packaging is about 450 horses. The profit of cotton cloth in Japan and Manila is basically between %, with the lowest 100% calculation, the profit per ton is 405 yuan, and after deducting excise taxes and shipping costs, the net profit is about 300 yuan per ton.

Cotton cloth is basically a medium-profitable cargo in the bulk cargo of overseas trade, so it is basically appropriate to measure the profit of the ship's tonnage by the profit of cotton cloth.

After calculating the gains and losses, most of the merchants expressed their willingness to accept the new taxation method. As for the insurance rate of the ship's cargo, Chongzhen also agrees with their opinion and will urge the ship insurance company to adjust it from 25% to below 225%.

After solving this problem, the representatives of the Southeast Maritime Merchants were obviously very excited, they had never thought that they would achieve such good results before they went to Beijing.

Zhu Youzhen sat down in the meeting room for a while, and when he saw that the meeting began to discuss some cumbersome details, he left the venue.

At the same time, Feng Quan, who was sent by Chongzhen to Shaanxi to rectify the style of study, finally arrived in the capital after the Lantern Festival, and went to Beijing with him, as well as 67 selected leaders of the exile army who were recruited.

Originally, there should have been 94 members of this team, but there were more than 20 leaders who were worried that this was the imperial court's plan to divert the tiger from the mountain and trick them into going to other places for disposal, so they pretended to be sick and refused to leave.

Since the imperial court did not have this intention, Feng Quan, who was like an arrow, did not bother to urge them, so he took the leaders who were willing to obey the orders of the imperial court to Beijing.

For him, after being away from the capital for so long, he was afraid that he would be forgotten by the emperor in Shaanxi like this, and then he would not be able to return to the center of the imperial court. This was obviously not the ending he wanted, so he took advantage of this opportunity to bring these Zhao'an leaders to Beijing, and he hurriedly asked for this task that did not match him.