The Tariff Code

The Tariff Code sets, cargo category by cargo category, how much duty is owed on goods passing through the Tribute Hall and how that revenue is split between the Directorate, the Sultanate's treasury, and a smaller administrative share retained by the Merchants' Compact. It is revised each year by a joint committee with representatives from all three bodies, and posted publicly on the Tribute Hall's outer wall in Chinese, Malay, Gujarati, and Arabic.

The Code's basic three-way split dates to the 1470s agreement that formally recognized the Merchants' Compact; before that, revenue division was negotiated ad hoc between the Directorate and the Sultanate alone, an arrangement both sides now generally agree was less stable. The current Code runs to several dozen cargo categories, from raw tin and unworked porcelain clay to finished silks and armed passage for ships carrying bullion, each taxed at a different rate reflecting decades of accumulated negotiation, favor-trading, and the occasional outright political grudge.

Disputes over classification -- is a given shipment "worked" or "unworked" goods, does a mixed cargo count under its highest-taxed component or by weighted average -- are constant, and the clerks who resolve them at the Tribute Hall wield influence disproportionate to their formal rank. A sympathetic classification can meaningfully change a merchant's margin on a voyage; an unsympathetic one has, more than once, been alleged to reflect a personal grudge rather than a neutral reading of the schedule.

The Code notably does not set the terms for Portuguese Factory trade, which is governed separately and more restrictively by the Factory Restriction Rules (see: The Factory Restriction Rules) -- a distinction the current factor considers unfair and the other two governing bodies consider the entire point.

Diverges from: none (a fictional regulatory instrument; no equivalent tariff-sharing code existed historically at Malacca).