“To be an agent of the Independent Republic’s Surveyors is to take on a nigh-incomprehensibly important mission. You may see it as just taxation but, revenue is the lifeblood of our boys in the front!”
There Nirmal is, the dark elf who was once the secretary of a certain Kim Seong-min. Now he led his own army, an army certainly mightier than any armed with swords. For it’s an army armed with the pen, or more exactly the quill, and the ledger. A terrifying force, all packed like sardines on the back of a cart driven by two horses.
Today, the IRS would be deployed for the first time. Nirmal took a look at the men in the cart. Half of them were bookkeepers from the city, those who were already experienced in the job, while the other half were freemen who had been educated in the elementary schools. Both those sides had been partnered up to each other, so that the freemen would learn accounting and the bookkeepers would learn to be less racist… hopefully. There had certainly been some protests to them working as equals to the “fugitives”, but receiving pay had shut the bookkeepers up for now. They had family to feed, necessities to buy, and… at this point, it seemed like the fugitives were going to stay for a little while.
Nirmal took his attention back to the ledger. A gift from Doctor Rabanowicz before she and the army had marched off to Karabush: the official census of the year 5860, with added data from the survey she had conducted. For most, it’d look like a droll piece of work with countless numbers stacked on top of each other… which is what it exactly was. However, to someone obsessed with number and accounting, it was a work of art. So much data, packed in so tightly into those columns in such beautiful-yet-hasty handwriting… Nirmal could kiss that ledger. He didn’t, because kissing ledgers is commonly seen as a weird thing to do.
Up the tarmac road (freshly tarred by the National Guard of Zon’guldac who had volunteered to work on the roads Republic-wide) the cart went, until it passed by the gates of Libertycave. Yes, gates! Building grand stone walls to properly surround such a gate would take years, but, the National Guard of Libertycave had volunteered to at least construct a grand brick gate to welcome visitors into the city. With giant letters readable from all the way down from the cart the gate read “55.III.5859”, the founding day of the republic which by now was two seasons old, half a year, the product of which now stood tall above them. Libertycave was surrounded by palisades which stood way less grand, but did their job to protect the place from wild animals and monsters. There wasn’t any toll entering the city like many others under Imperial jurisdiction, nor were there tolls along the roads of the Republic, to not stifle free movement and trade.
The roads had been cleared of robbers looking to extract such tolls by the men of the National Guard who regularly patrolled along the Imperial Highway system, and with the absence of nobility, there wasn’t anyone left capable of enforcing such a toll along the highway. So, a great flow of men and carts entered and exited Libertycave, looking to do their business. Coal and steel from Zon’guldac, grain from Karabush, hazelnuts from Bolipoli, raw copper from Mount Curry, livestock from nomads beyond the mountain, every minute a microcosm of the Republic passing through the gates. Nirmal and co. melted into this microcosm, having to wait a while in the traffic of carts of men before they could push through.
Through the gates and palisades stood Libertycave proper. Nowhere near as big as, say, the Imperial capital or Ancoire, but it certainly was large for how far away from the center of Gemeinplatz it was. More than a thousand people, it had been growing so rapidly that the census was probably wrong by this point, all living up in the mountain. No longer hiding in the dark, rather shining as a bright beacon of freedom in Gemeinplatz. Freshly-laid tarmac complete with drainage. Signposts naming streets laid out in a neat grid; the dwarves had insisted that they be allowed to assist with the urban planning, and they had practically dug up their subterranean organization up to the surface… not to mention all the buildings they had also dug in to Mount Curry itself. Libertycave grew not only on the surface but underground as well, with the carved-out windows of the mountainside peeking down at the surface inhabitants.
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With how organized the streets were, Nirmal found it easy to make their way into the office of the IRS. It was a small building, only two stories tall as most buildings in Libertycave, nowhere close to the offices he had seen in Seoul. Now that their tax-collection was done in the relatively smaller town of Casamonu, it was time for them to start their round of collection in Libertycave. People had already lined up outside the door, anxiously waiting the arrival of the dreaded species known as the “tax collector”.
“Alright, please, let us pass-” It took a second for the line to allow for the passage of the IRS officers. Soon they were through, and, into their office lined up with desks and even more quills and ledgers. After the officers were set up, without any time to rest, Nirmal had to give the signal “We’re open!”
Immediate cacophony, as the line outside poured into the office. Unlike what Brown and Rabanowicz had initially planned, the income taxes weren’t to be paid in money. In practice, it had quickly turned out that most people in Gemeinplatz in fact did not have much liquid assets in hand. Coins were a matter of nobles, stewards and merchants, for exchanging goods and services between foreign places or storing wealth. Most people in a pre-industrial society as Gemeinplatz owned, produced and received goods and services rather than money. Thus, the income tax was to be paid by taking a part of what a household produced from a pre-set list of taxable goods… which is why Nirmal was currently dealing with a live chicken being shoved in his face by a concerned citizen looking to pay her part.
The head tax collector Nirmal got an assistant to take the chicken away, next being presented a head of cabbage, then a bar of copper, so on and so forth which were all taken away to be stored while his assistants recorded every new entry. The fate of these goods would be decided later once they were all recorded down. Perhaps the chickens would be sent away to homesteads in some new mass-poultry program, perhaps the cabbages to the Army of the Republic to make provisions, perhaps the copper would be minted into coinage… or there was also the option of selling items off, to turn them into cash. For now, all Nirmal was concerned about was not having the office be littered in chicken excrement.
Coin itself did occasionally make its way however. From shopkeepers and merchants residing in Libertycave, they made their contribution of coin. Nirmal suspected that the merchants were underselling how much they made, but enforcing taxation was another matter, one that he’d perhaps work on with a surprise inspection to whoever he suspected was underpaying. A check of the merchant’s own ledgers, and the truth would be revealed, unless the merchant in question was cooking the books which… was possible. It was possible. That’s about how much Nirmal could afford to think on that matter right now. The IRS would have to think about dealing with tax-avoidance later, after it had survived this first round of taxation. The freemen were complying with taxation well-enough, for now.
Thus, after about an hour, Nirmal relaxed his shoulders and got into the groove. Live chicken, bag of grain, bar of copper, live chicken, bag of coin, grain, coin, chicken, copper, cabbage, cabbage, grain, coin… a mug of tea, to keep himself from falling asleep, then back to work… such was the work of the not-so-brave-but-diligent unnamed men whose work was perhaps most crucial to keeping the Republic alive.
