Hidden Moth

Chapter 645 378: The Tribal Stronghold's Rivalry Returns

The Stone Gang is not only the only major employer in Stone District, but also the only major landlord.They have established a series of operational entities, with Stone Manufacturing at the core. The buildings renovated and reconstructed within the community include various workshops that have been abandoned for years, and several processing factories have been set up again.

These factories are not sweatshops; they are formally registered enterprises that pay taxes. Their employees include skilled workers and engineers, many of whom are quite experienced.

The majority of residents in Stone District are immigrants, including a large number from Eastern Country. However, those born in the United States with Eastern Country descent are not the majority; surprisingly, many immigrants hail from places like Ramy.

Among the residents are white people, not only natives but also quite a few from Europe, particularly Eastern European countries...

In the eyes of people from other neighborhoods, many workers here are quite impressive. They use query tools to translate professional vocabulary into Eastern Country's language, understand various manuals and operation guides, and can write, calculate, and draw...

Some factories closely resemble Jiuliang Manufacturing, capable of producing various components according to blueprints. Others can achieve semi-automated production and adjust production lines anytime, batch processing, assembling various products and parts.

Some items even He Kao doesn't know what they're for; the workers might not know either. They just produce according to customer demands. Some items are familiar to He Kao, merely small commodities, including home appliances.

Initially, He Kao was a bit doubtful, wondering whether running such factories locally would be profitable. After thorough research, he found out that profits were exceptionally substantial, and orders flooded in.

Orders come from various local suppliers in the United States, large gangs which are civilian organization groups, and even certain big corporate conglomerates... The latter typically require confidentiality agreements.

Factories can make money, but more importantly, they solve the employment problem for a large number of people in the neighborhood. However, it's not something anyone can run; rather, very few can manage.

First, it's important to ensure that no one causes trouble, such as official or social personnel, and the supply of water and electricity must be stable.

As for taxes, of course, they must be paid, but only on the surface part. This applies to both corporate income and personal income; some pay only a small portion, and some simply don't pay.

With the U.S. tax departments known for their viciously harsh style, isn't this risky? Surprisingly, it's not!

In many people's perceptions, the U.S. tax department is mysterious and powerful, its execution capability extremely impressive, seemingly all-powerful, as if anyone they want to investigate for taxes cannot escape.

From a practical operational perspective, many occurrences seemingly validate this view. Not only legal income but even illegal gang income appears to have to pay taxes!

However, after in-depth understanding, the so-called U.S. tax myth is actually a huge misunderstanding.

In circumstances where grassroots governance is basically out of order, administrative procedures are cumbersome, functions are hollow, and actual execution is weak, yet there's an exceptionally strong micro-control function department, this itself doesn't conform to common sense and logic.

The reported strength of the U.S. tax department is based on two premises.

Firstly, the high level of financial development thoroughly penetrates various production and consumption links. Almost all routine economic activities must go through the financial system, which leaves transaction records.

Tax departments can query these transaction records and, in most cases, automatically obtain data.

As long as you use a bank account, such as cashing checks, swiping credit cards, taking out loans, receiving payments, you'll leave detailed network data in the financial system; there's no escaping it.

The second premise is that the U.S. tax system and tax laws are extremely chaotic.

The various tax rates are not only incredibly complex in calculation methods but also contradict each other, like a code full of bugs, yet its chaos and complexity are masked by so-called professionalism.

What is meant by U.S. professionalism? It means setting extremely high professional barriers, making the entire system incredibly complex, rendering non-professionals unable to understand it.

The English-speaking countries have another "advantage" wherein even highly educated social elites can't understand complex professional terminology and various vocabulary from another field.

So most people can't even understand tax documents at all, let alone those with weak math skills trying to calculate them, usually requiring professional accountants to file taxes.

Under these circumstances, professional tax personnel are always able to find faults when investigating taxes, and their so-called strength is a result of information asymmetry.

As for the notion that even illegal gang income needs to pay taxes, this is another misunderstanding. Because transforming illegal income into legal income allows it to be spent in many occasions, and money only has meaning when it can be spent.

The process of laundering illegal income inevitably results in tax records.

Another situation also leads to this misunderstanding: sometimes law enforcement agencies want to target someone but can't find sufficient evidence to prosecute, so they start with the most easily found faults in tax issues and thereby catch them.

This phenomenon doesn't prove the strength of the U.S. tax department; it rather precisely proves the incompetence of law enforcement agencies.

The reason for mentioning these is that He Kao had also heard of the tax lore in the United States, so he paid special attention to it, and then discovered it wasn't quite the case. The Stone District had its own local methods for this.

There is a large amount of production and trading activities here, outside of the United States' financial system.

Most households here grow fruits and vegetables, and on the fence posts used to enclose the gardens, there are even fungi, clearly artificially cultivated mushroom strains. Single-family or townhouse buildings are one thing, but where are the gardens for those three- or four-story dormitories?

The open space near buildings can be partitioned and then subdivided, each family has such a plot, and they can plant whatever they want. Seeds, saplings, plastic film, etc., can be purchased at local stores; they can even build simple greenhouses in the winter.

Such activities aren't allowed in other places in Luoshan City, but here the property owners' committee not only doesn't prohibit them but encourages self-sufficiency. So, local residents can almost always eat fresh fruits and vegetables without spending much money.

If there's no need to buy things outside, many payment transactions within the neighborhood can avoid using local bank accounts, or even cash, relying instead on their internal accounting system, where the accounting unit isn't US Dollar.

Most of the living supplies can be provided within the neighborhood, and only in rare cases would products or services need to be sourced externally, and typically, the Stone District handles it.

As for dealings with other regional gangs, often, they just use cash or barter directly.

The Stone District also procured many things from Eastern Country, including various supplies and raw materials, components. Apart from the overt portion, most of the rest is tax-free, or frankly, smuggled.

Aside from these three integrated neighborhoods, the Luoshan Family also controls another three plots in the nearby area, not residential zones, also acquired through commercial entities.

First is a farm covering approximately one hundred thousand acres. Although it sounds large, its area is only about seven square kilometers.

Second is a private dock by the sea, small in scale but with deep waters; it's officially used for docking private yachts, but it can also accommodate fishing boats and cargo ships.

The last is a hilly area next to the farm, where there's a small reservoir and an auxiliary small hydropower station. More importantly, they acquired ownership of the small watershed's water resources in this area.

The small reservoir was built by the Shi Family themselves, obtaining the permit and then constructing it took a full eight years, with most efforts spent on various complicated procedures, needing to privately smooth over many connections.

These three sites are also key resource points for the Stone District.

For instance, much of the material transport is carried out through the private dock. The Luoshan Family has its ways to elude the coast guard's scrutiny or make the relevant authorities turn a blind eye.

Many things here would theoretically draw severe penalties if uncovered, but it's like a relatively enclosed ecosystem, seldom caught by outsiders' attention.

Are there informers? Of course! Whistleblowers come not only from external forces but often from those blur-minded internal residents, and quite a few Eastern Country-origin immigrants too.

The reports include harboring illegal immigrants, smuggling, tax evasion... with the most being illegal medical practice?

Someone went to a medical institution run by the Stone District to seek treatment, enjoyed convenient and cheap medical care, only to find many procedures entirely inconsistent with United States legal regulations, and then turned back to report the medical institution...

Thus, a wave of people disappeared after each report, driving the senior members of the Shi Family into complete annoyance for a time.

Though repeatedly reported, it has never truly been investigated, as the whistleblowers and those intending to dig into it are very unlucky, disappearing in uniquely horrific ways, exhibiting distinct United States characteristics; anyway, nothing can be traced back to the Stone District.

Later on, such incidents gradually subsided. Although reporting incidents still occur occasionally, the frequency has significantly decreased.

The local authorities do conduct paper investigations, but very few are willing to engage in field investigations and even if they did, they couldn't find any results.

While the internal situation here seems good in terms of public security, to outsiders, this place remains a highly xenophobic and dangerously chaotic neighborhood, so much that even the police prefer not to intervene.

It is notorious for being dangerous, and indeed it can be very dangerous.

However, it is best not to use such extreme measures, and the Luoshan Family will also focus on cultivating relationships with all parties, nurturing "their people" in all critical local departments.

The cultivation targets include but are not limited to law enforcement agencies, all institutions exercising government functions...

He Kao learned a lot from the perspective of Shi Yunfeng, choosing this Transference object because Shi Yunfeng, although an ordinary person without cultivation, had a relatively special status, allowing contact with many core figures and secrets locally.

How to describe it? This is somewhat akin to a rural autonomous mini-society, according to Eastern Country's historical experience, not even counting as a local separatist force because its scale is still too small.

From another perspective, under the backdrop of modern industrial civilization, it appears as a de facto separated, modern and primitive socialist economic features coexisting, tribalized civilization form, full of incongruity and peculiarity!

**