Yangzhou Jiangdu Qingzhu Garden, which is a wide area and almost everywhere is a delicate garden, was built by the local salt merchant Yang 20 years ago.

When the Yang family built the garden, it was almost a sensation, because the construction period reached several years, and although the cost was not disclosed by the Yang family, outsiders speculated that this green bamboo garden would cost at least hundreds of thousands of taels.

This shows the wealth of the Yang family!

Today, several of the main members of the Yang clan in Qingzhuyuan gathered together to discuss the recent difficult situation!

Yes, since the Tang Dynasty conquered Yangzhou, the local salt merchants are in huge trouble, although the Tang Dynasty is reasonable, will not play for no reason, and these local salt merchants are also smart people, well aware of the importance of spending money to buy peace, after the Tang Dynasty entered Yangzhou, the local salt merchants led by the businessmen, in the payment of taxes, the treatment of the Tang Dynasty related policies, that is quite obedient.

Without the help of the local tax inspection team or the garrison, more than a dozen top salt merchants in Yangzhou City at that time proposed to take the initiative to donate military supplies to the army, and the amount reached 200,000 taels of silver.

Then in the agricultural tax, commercial tax is also active and proactive, no tax officials come to the door, people themselves are with the acres of land and shop roster to pay taxes, and there is no concealment, all of them are a lot of money, full payment of all agricultural taxes and commercial taxes, and even more.

The active behavior of these salt merchants surprised the tax officials who went to Yangzhou to preside over the tax work for a while!

In other places, blood will be shed all over the place, and the local gentry and merchants will pay obediently, but in Yangzhou, everything is reversed, and there is no need for tax officials to come to urge payment, let alone dispatch tax inspection teams, and these salt merchants take the initiative to subscribe.

Therefore, for the gentry of Yangzhou, especially the salt merchants, the officials of the Tang Dynasty were relatively relaxed at first, since the people paid the money, although the huge wealth of the salt merchants of the popular people, but since they all paid taxes, then forget it.

But what I didn't expect was that in just one month, the local officials just felt bad!

Why?

Because on the surface, the local salt merchants bowed their heads, took the initiative to donate, paid taxes, and did not openly rebel against the salt industry policy of the Tang Dynasty.

However, they found that Datang Salt Company was not going well when it carried out the state-owned salt industry in the local area, the business volume was far from meeting expectations, and the profits were low, which also led to the salt tax being far from meeting expectations!

It's not that no one is so bold as to create superficial obstacles for them, but there is very little salt in the salt works, and after being transported to a certain place, the official salt cannot be sold.

And they soon discovered the reason behind this, that is, the overflow of illegal salt!

Even who is selling illicit salt can be guessed, that is, those big salt merchants, and those who have the ability to organize such a large-scale illegal salt sale can only be those big salt merchants

Although local officials and patrol police tried to put an end to salt smuggling, set up numerous checkpoints to confiscate, and even blatantly monitored the main salt merchant families in Yangzhou City, trying to collect evidence of their illegal salt trafficking, although there were many people who smuggled salt, they were all inconspicuous small actors, and they could not contact those big salt merchants.

So it was formed, the local officials knew that those big salt merchants were selling illicit salt, but they could not find the key evidence, the local patrol police yamen was powerless, and even after a few months, even many people were bribed, after the establishment of the Yangzhou Patrol Police Bureau, three patrol police chiefs have been replaced, and the first two terms were planted on corruption.

Later, the patrol police department personally sent a patrol team to Yangzhou, but a few months passed, more than a dozen main officials of this patrol team, one inexplicably fell into the water and died, one was hit by a mad horse on the street and died, and five were found out to have suddenly obtained a huge amount of property and were arrested and beheaded directly.

Even the bribe-givers couldn't be found, because according to the investigation, no one bribed them at all, they all found these huge amounts of Datang Royal Bank silver bills in their rooms, silver bills with a face value of one hundred taels, enough to fill a small box, there was only a small piece of paper in it, let them come to Yangzhou to eat and drink well, and then get out with the money, if they dare to do anything else, they will bear the consequences!

So they just eat, drink and be merry every day until the East Window Incident!

Although the remaining few confiscated the money, they also achieved nothing, and the patrol officers were demoted to the Dayuanfu by the angry senior officials of the patrol department, and in this life, they don't expect to be able to return to the prosperous Central Plains.

The patrol team dispatched by the Patrol Police Department has not achieved an inch, which fully proves how rampant the local illegal salt activities are!

In this kind of big back, Chen Lifu came to Yangzhou!

Chen Lifu's brought, but did not arouse the vigilance of the salt merchants, because the salt merchants felt that they were honest to pay taxes, and the fields under their names all paid full agricultural taxes, and the commercial houses and the like also paid full taxes.

This time, several core clansmen of the Yang family in Qingzhuyuan gathered together, not related to Chen Lifu, but related to the patrol department.

It is rumored that Lord Shangshu of the Patrol Police Department, who accompanied him to the north, personally issued a document to reprimand other high-ranking officials of the Patrol Police Department who stayed in Jinling, and scolded the two squires and several division elders for being a bloody leader, and even a director of the Patrol Police Department who was in charge at this time was demoted to Hunan for this.

After that, the adults of the patrol police department transferred cadres from several other places, especially in Guizhou and Liangguang, and once again formed a salt industry patrol team to go to Jiangbei Province.

Because of the lessons learned from the previous time, the officers of the patrol team selected this time are all carefully selected, and they are all highly qualified in the patrol department, have rich experience in combating all kinds of crimes in the local area, and are also cadres who can withstand consideration!

The arrival of the second salt industry inspection team made many salt merchants in Yangzhou once again feel deep malice!

They have begun to make corresponding measures, and the same is true for the Yang family, but how to deal with them, they still need to discuss carefully, the simplest and safest way is to suspend the private salt business first, and wait for the rumors to pass.

But as the Yang family, who is currently the most courageous and the largest in the private salt business, let them stop the private salt business for a day, and the loss is countless money, and the Yang family is unwilling to do so until the last resort.

When they were discussing how to deal with the second salt industry inspection team of the Patrol Police Department, Chen Lifu in the city was also looking at a thick stack of files!

Chen Lifu had been to Huai'an Mansion before, and met with local officials, and then rectified the local tax system with thunderous means, a group of local tax officials were dug out by him, and then transferred to the Inspectorate for judicial trial, and many green-skinned hooligans in the tax inspection team were also severely attacked by Chen Lifu.

Before carrying out local tax work, he will first rectify the local tax internal system to ensure that it is easier to do things, of course, this is also Chen Lifu's selfishness, he has always been unaccustomed to those messy people in the tax inspection team.

After initially rectifying the tax system of Jiangbei Province, he came to Yangzhou!

The purpose of coming to Yangzhou is naturally very simple, that is, the local salt tax revenue is far lower than the Ministry of Taxation expected, and Chen Lifu has only one task in Jiangbei Province, that is, to collect the salt tax that should be collected.

What is the salt tax?

Because the output and selling price of the salt farm and the number of local population are fixed, it is very easy to estimate how much salt tax can be collected.

After flipping through the files, Chen Lifu set his sights on one of the files!

These files are all internal investigation files of the Ministry of Taxation on the big merchants in Yangzhou City, and these big merchants are all salt merchants!

Yes, before coming to Yangzhou, Chen Lifu was ready to take down these salt merchants, he couldn't control these salt merchants selling illegal salt, but he had to take care of the taxes on selling the four eyes!

He had also seconded the files from the patrol department before, but found that these salt merchants were very secretive, and the patrol officers could not obtain key evidence through normal means, so they arrested and raided their homes!

Although there is no evidence, according to the urine of the judicial personnel of the Tang Dynasty in the past, you can directly raid the house if you find a reason, but today's Tang Dynasty is different from the past.

The current Tang Dynasty has moved towards regularization, and many things can't be done as casually as before, and this copy of the family must also be justified, otherwise the impact will not be good.

Therefore, the current judicial institutions and tax authorities of the Tang Dynasty pay attention to legal and reasonable copying!

However, the salt merchants are obviously law-abiding and good citizens, and there is no evidence of their involvement in the illegal salt, which makes the patrol police quite helpless.

However, these problems are not a problem in Chen Lifu's opinion!

Hmph, although the patrol police department can't find any evidence that these salt merchants are involved in smuggling and selling salt, and there is no way to attack these salt merchants, it doesn't mean that their tax department can't do it!

Their tax department wants to find trouble with a person, and they have never tried to find it, it is nothing more than a question of whether they want to or not!

When local officials, patrol police departments and other departments have nothing to do with these salt merchants, it is time for their tax department to stand up and administer justice!