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[Haspen]

Where's 'burn the witch!' option?

A

[Cnidaros]

TURNTURNTURN
You rule that the woman isn't entitled to a refund. There are some disappointed looks, but the whole entourage is shoo-ed out of the council chamber with a minimum of fuss.

You ask the Steward for more details on the treasury, since Economics is your strong suit after all. He shows you to the Treasury, which happens to be a couple doors down. It is literally an empty windowless room, with two guards outside the locked door and one mid-sized chest on the floor, full of actual gold coins. You don't what you were expecting, exactly, but not this. He also shows you the following Scroll of Treasury Status.

Treasury: 22
Household Expenses: 2
Guard and Army Expenses: 2

Approximate Tax Amounts:
To Duke Wolstan: 8
From personal holdings: 3
From Baron Axel: 3
From Baron Recce: 2
From Dumedin Throvis: 3
Taxes are due twice yearly, in Late Spring and Late Autumn!

You're pretty sure they had better spreadsheets in the Bronze Age. Also, you still have no idea what those numbers even mean in the real world. Rather than explaining what the numbers mean, the Steward instead explains that taxes are due twice yearly, and other expenses are yearly. "But don't worry," he smiles kindly, "I'll be around to warn you if you're in danger of running out of coin!"

Hmm. Some quick mental math shows you're in the black for now. You can already think of some things to do with the gold...

A) No use letting it sit there in a chest, start a bank and make that gold work for you!
B) Instead of lending that gold to others, why not make your own trading company?
C) Wait, "approximate" tax amounts? Time to form a proper tax bureau!
D) That's a lot of gold, surely some can be spared for an engineering workshop?
E) Ok, good. Just let the treasury be for now, I'll do something with it later.

Italicized options are those that get a bonus from your Knowledge, while Bold options are those that work towards your Purpose.

[Haspen]

A

Commerce and banking make and break nation-states, might as well start early.

[TricMagic]

C- Proper Taxes are important to prevent being rob'd of what is owed.

[Rockeater]

C

[mightymushroom]

A

[Glass]

C. Everything starts to run much more smoothly once you have more - and more accurate - information.

[Cnidaros]

TURNTURNTURN
You decide to form a tax bureau. Can't have those peasants getting away with not paying their taxes!

You ask the Steward how taxes are typically collected. He explains that you sell contracts to traveling tax collectors for the expected value of the tax (around one-tenth of the goods produced in that half-year), along with a letter of authority to collect taxes on your behalf, and they're the ones who go through the countryside and collect the taxes in person (which usually requires armed guards). Taxes can be paid in coin or in goods to the tax collector, but since you sell the tax contracts for coin, your tax revenues are in coin which is convenient. On the upside, this system more or less ensures that you, the feudal lord, get a consistent tax revenue, as any inability to collect falls on the tax collectors. On the downside, it's an extra middleman of profit-taking, and you're absolutely sure that some collectors are collecting more than what they're due, possibly causing unhappiness.

It's a little too ambitious to think about keeping track of and taxing individuals at this stage, so you come up with a system where only the head of households and businesses owe tax. You don't have a good record of taxes due at a smaller-than-village level, so for the first year the system will rely on self-reported incomes, and refer back to previous year's taxes in subsequent years.

7

You appoint a bright young woman from among the burghers to be your new Tax Collector, and task her with setting up the tax bureau in one of the castle's unused rooms. There's a lot of work to be done, starting with hiring more scribes, clerks, taxmen, and making sure the news about the change reaches every part of your demesne. It seems to be off to a promising start, but you won't know how it actually performs until tax time comes.

A few days later, the new Tax Collector comes to you with several questions.

She doesn't think that self-reporting is going to be very effective for this first round of tax collection, and proposes to take a survey of all your lands and households to determine their approximate income. Of course, this is going to be very costly.

A) Yes, conduct the survey of lands.
B) No, the peasants won't dare to cheat on their taxes

Additionally, while this system is so far only limited to your personal lands, the whole reason why you started it was because you couldn't live with the idea of not knowing how much tax was actually due to you. Obviously, your feudal vassals also owe tax to you: they should be included in the system as well. However, your Steward warns you that the right of taxation is a sacred privilege for each noble, and your vassals won't stand for having you collect taxes on their lands. Even if it's on their behalf, to collect taxes that will ultimately go to you.

A) Send the tax collectors through their lands, and the surveyors too!
B) Send only the surveyors, so you know how much tax is actually due
C) No, let them collect their own taxes

[ZBridges]

AB

[Glass]

AB

For the first, the entire point of this is to legitimately know what what our income should be. Self-reporting incentivizes underreporting.
For the second, well, some of the taxes go to the Barons directly, so of course us gathering it all would be problematic. What we should do is encourage them to set up a system like ours, establish a bureaucracy, and ease them into a more standardized and unified setup ("well, if the tax agencies were all unified, they could all do their jobs much more effectively...")


Also the issue isn't just making sure that the peasants pay their taxes, but also making sure that nobody tries to tax them multiple times, or punishes them for not paying their taxes when they actually have. A well-organized tax agency helps everyone.

[King Zultan]

AB

[Rockeater]

AC showing such a distrust in our barons will piss them off, I say we test it on our lands first to prove the concept, and when it works we can choose to either tempt them with better profit or force them with our lordship over them.

Edit: probably we would have better knowledge if we chose another thing, but how the ruling work here? is the land our land or our king's land and we just manage it?

[Cnidaros]

You decide to order a great survey of the lands, both yours and your vassal's to determine how much tax is due. Several parties of surveyors are sent out, going to each town and village to record what their inhabitants own. Other parties are sent east, west and southwest to the lands of your vassals, although you refrain from extending the authority of your tax bureau into their lands yet. It will take time for the survey to be completed. In the meantime, your Steward hands you a note:

Treasury 14

Ouch. You're sure it'll pay itself back soon, though.

In the meantime, you decide it's time to explore your surroundings a little more. Where will you go?

A) Explore your castle of Tyneset
B) Explore your town of Tyneton
C) Visit the lands of Baron Axel (1 day east)
D) Visit the lands of Baron Reece (2 days southwest)
E) Visit the lands of Dumedin Throvis (2 days west)

[mightymushroom]

I'm sure we'll find all kinds of things to modernize futurize in our own properties. But we also want our vassals to buy in, if we can.

C
Baron Axel is the larger of the two barons, judging by his previous tax levy.

[Rockeater]

C, also explaining to him our new taxing plan is better now and face to face then to have the surveyors try to.