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yrae
Talechasing Topic of the Week ~ Administration
Does your world have a civil service? Who organises taxes and/or tithes? What are taxes used for? (policing, poor relief, road maintenance...)
...Ahaha admin. I could just about do a separate post per kingdom for this one. But I won't, because that would just be too boring.
Tsayth
Probably the only kingdom that's actually got it together, who'da thunk it? Every ship in Tsayth is recorded in Ryas, the capital, and they're all required to pay their taxes every... amount of time. Whenever they're in the vicinity of Ryas. They work it out by the month, so for every month a ship has been gone, they get taxed. If they're gone more than five years, thennnn they get a black spot against their name until they DO pay up. Ten years and the ship is officially written off as a wreck (unless someone reports this earlier, of course.)
About the black spot, well. When a ship docks in Ryas to pay its taxes, the captain gets a list of all the black-spotted ships, and it's up to him/her whether or not to trade with them. Vast majority of the time, it's a no. Black-spotted ships are untrustworthy and dishonest, not paying taxes when other hard-working sailors are paying their way, so they get shunned. No policing, just good old fashioned refusal of business.
And remember what I said about the community aspect all the ships have? The list of black-spotted ships is something that gets discussed between captains when they meet up. Word can travel pretty fast that way.
As for what the taxes get used for, mostly wood from Llayad to build and repair ships. The king and queen also make sure trading is kept fair in the other nations for the Tsaythi sailors, keeping taxes at the major ports affordable, etc and so on.
Llayad
Llayans have tax men that go between castles to collect money from the estate, but being typically Llayan, it's not a simple matter of owing Xgold to the crown and paying up. The visiting of the tax man is the Lord's and Lady's chance to raise any issues about how the kingdom is run, remind them of drought or disease or whatever, make an example of how much they've spent on the town around their castle, anything that will lower their taxes for the year.
Between five and ten prominent townspeople are always present at these meetings, because it's ultimately the money they earn that goes into the taxes. They'll also raise issues with their Lord and Lady, and it's all generally very civil and Llayan. Tax man tries to get as much money as he can, and the town tries to keep as much of it back as they can.
Money gets spent mostly on roads and helping out any of the towns that HAVE had a genuinely rough year. Then anything left over buys a new wardrobe for the Llayan royal family. And maybe a new jewellery box. Keeping up appearances, guys, c'mon.
Kazin
OH GOD NO. Kazin's admin is an absolute MESS. The idea~ is that people pay taxes for the services they actually use. The reality is that there are so many taxes EVERYWHERE that people get confused, irritated and potentially violent. They'll avoid them in any way possible and probably get themselves in shit for it down the track. Use that road? Taxed. Shop at that market? Taxed. Stable that horse there? Taxed. Pick up a letter? Taxed. There's no single lump of money like every other nation has, it's just constantly there in eeeeverything you do in Kazin.
Except the queen of every province. She has a lump sum to pay back to the empress every year, and this is based on how much money the empress reckons that province is making. Rich province pays up big, poor one tends to be a bit of a backwater she doesn't care about anyway. How exactly the money is made, the empress doesn't generally care, just as long as the taxes get paid then she's happy. Generally, this is roughly a third of what the province makes. The other two thirds they keep.
The province's own money gets spent on whatever's needed. Some pour it into the military, while other, calmer provinces might spend it on improving roads or building new community buildings. It never gets spent on the poor. If a queen started doing that, it wouldn't be long before she had a coup on her hands.
The money that ends up with the empress partly gets spent on the same sort of stuff in Assiraz, but always half of it goes on the army. Whether that means building new barracks, training more troops, raising salaries of army leaders or even the soldiers sometimes, whatever it takes. Then there has to be enough left over for the empress to fund her own palace, of course.
Raykin
Similar approach to Llayad, in that tax time is also an opportunity for businesses and residents to speak up about any issues they have with the kingdom. However, in Raykin, a kingdom that likes to say it values the opinion of every individual, it's decidedly more messy and complicated.
In the smaller towns it's easy enough, people just yell at the mayor (or, more commonly, the pub owner) about what's wrong, then s/he'll write it all down and send it back to Ni-Yana with the tax man. In the four big cities and some of the smaller ones, a public forum or several will be held in a sort of council meeting type fashion. Lots of yelling, lots of beer, all very Raykinian and in the end something may come of it.
All these opinions eventually get pulled together and the ministers at the palace make some sense out of them. They write up reports pertaining to agriculture, education, roads, particular towns hit by a disaster, parts of Ni-Yana where crime is more rampant, then funds get allocated accordingly. The main report itself is delivered to the royals and the treasury on the Winter Solstice. Nol hates it, mostly because even he can smell the rhetoric a mile away.
The taxes come from businesses rather than individuals. This means every coin an individual earns, from waitress at a dodgy southern districts pub to swordsman in First Company, they keep to spend how they see fit. To an outsider it may seem like a Raykinian doesn't get paid a lot, but none of that money has to go back to the treasury.
Does your world have a civil service? Who organises taxes and/or tithes? What are taxes used for? (policing, poor relief, road maintenance...)
...Ahaha admin. I could just about do a separate post per kingdom for this one. But I won't, because that would just be too boring.
Tsayth
Probably the only kingdom that's actually got it together, who'da thunk it? Every ship in Tsayth is recorded in Ryas, the capital, and they're all required to pay their taxes every... amount of time. Whenever they're in the vicinity of Ryas. They work it out by the month, so for every month a ship has been gone, they get taxed. If they're gone more than five years, thennnn they get a black spot against their name until they DO pay up. Ten years and the ship is officially written off as a wreck (unless someone reports this earlier, of course.)
About the black spot, well. When a ship docks in Ryas to pay its taxes, the captain gets a list of all the black-spotted ships, and it's up to him/her whether or not to trade with them. Vast majority of the time, it's a no. Black-spotted ships are untrustworthy and dishonest, not paying taxes when other hard-working sailors are paying their way, so they get shunned. No policing, just good old fashioned refusal of business.
And remember what I said about the community aspect all the ships have? The list of black-spotted ships is something that gets discussed between captains when they meet up. Word can travel pretty fast that way.
As for what the taxes get used for, mostly wood from Llayad to build and repair ships. The king and queen also make sure trading is kept fair in the other nations for the Tsaythi sailors, keeping taxes at the major ports affordable, etc and so on.
Llayad
Llayans have tax men that go between castles to collect money from the estate, but being typically Llayan, it's not a simple matter of owing Xgold to the crown and paying up. The visiting of the tax man is the Lord's and Lady's chance to raise any issues about how the kingdom is run, remind them of drought or disease or whatever, make an example of how much they've spent on the town around their castle, anything that will lower their taxes for the year.
Between five and ten prominent townspeople are always present at these meetings, because it's ultimately the money they earn that goes into the taxes. They'll also raise issues with their Lord and Lady, and it's all generally very civil and Llayan. Tax man tries to get as much money as he can, and the town tries to keep as much of it back as they can.
Money gets spent mostly on roads and helping out any of the towns that HAVE had a genuinely rough year. Then anything left over buys a new wardrobe for the Llayan royal family. And maybe a new jewellery box. Keeping up appearances, guys, c'mon.
Kazin
OH GOD NO. Kazin's admin is an absolute MESS. The idea~ is that people pay taxes for the services they actually use. The reality is that there are so many taxes EVERYWHERE that people get confused, irritated and potentially violent. They'll avoid them in any way possible and probably get themselves in shit for it down the track. Use that road? Taxed. Shop at that market? Taxed. Stable that horse there? Taxed. Pick up a letter? Taxed. There's no single lump of money like every other nation has, it's just constantly there in eeeeverything you do in Kazin.
Except the queen of every province. She has a lump sum to pay back to the empress every year, and this is based on how much money the empress reckons that province is making. Rich province pays up big, poor one tends to be a bit of a backwater she doesn't care about anyway. How exactly the money is made, the empress doesn't generally care, just as long as the taxes get paid then she's happy. Generally, this is roughly a third of what the province makes. The other two thirds they keep.
The province's own money gets spent on whatever's needed. Some pour it into the military, while other, calmer provinces might spend it on improving roads or building new community buildings. It never gets spent on the poor. If a queen started doing that, it wouldn't be long before she had a coup on her hands.
The money that ends up with the empress partly gets spent on the same sort of stuff in Assiraz, but always half of it goes on the army. Whether that means building new barracks, training more troops, raising salaries of army leaders or even the soldiers sometimes, whatever it takes. Then there has to be enough left over for the empress to fund her own palace, of course.
Raykin
Similar approach to Llayad, in that tax time is also an opportunity for businesses and residents to speak up about any issues they have with the kingdom. However, in Raykin, a kingdom that likes to say it values the opinion of every individual, it's decidedly more messy and complicated.
In the smaller towns it's easy enough, people just yell at the mayor (or, more commonly, the pub owner) about what's wrong, then s/he'll write it all down and send it back to Ni-Yana with the tax man. In the four big cities and some of the smaller ones, a public forum or several will be held in a sort of council meeting type fashion. Lots of yelling, lots of beer, all very Raykinian and in the end something may come of it.
All these opinions eventually get pulled together and the ministers at the palace make some sense out of them. They write up reports pertaining to agriculture, education, roads, particular towns hit by a disaster, parts of Ni-Yana where crime is more rampant, then funds get allocated accordingly. The main report itself is delivered to the royals and the treasury on the Winter Solstice. Nol hates it, mostly because even he can smell the rhetoric a mile away.
The taxes come from businesses rather than individuals. This means every coin an individual earns, from waitress at a dodgy southern districts pub to swordsman in First Company, they keep to spend how they see fit. To an outsider it may seem like a Raykinian doesn't get paid a lot, but none of that money has to go back to the treasury.