The sack on Cedar Holm's kitchen table held 10,000 bits, counted twice and tied with orchard twine. Nothing in the house books showed it leaving. Her nephew's wage slip from the Hearthstone Smithy, folded under a cup, showed 418 bits for the week before the wage levy. The Kin Levy card in his name was a blank.
Holm keeps the north cider rows outside Ponyville. She pulled the sum from a late press that barely cleared the new barrel hoops. Tobin Ash, her sister's son, is 24, rents a room over the tack lane for 190 bits a month, and has worked the smithy's second shift since spring.
"I sold what I could sell and I kept the orchard running," Holm said. "That sack is his start. He can buy his own tools out of it, and they will be his."
The Kin Levy answered on Thursday with a half sheet, a grade, and a tin saucer. A nephew sits in Band B, beside siblings and grandchildren. A son or daughter sits in Band A, where 10,000 bits would sit well under the line. Band B stops at 40,000 bits in a lifetime, from every aunt, uncle, and grandparent who ever gave him anything. Past the line the Levy takes 33 bits out of each 100. A pony outside the family stops at 20,000.
The first 3,000 bits from a single giver in a year are ordinary kindness and leave the ceiling alone. Clerk Maris Dodd lifted 3,000 bits from the counted figure onto a tin saucer, stamped the saucer ORDINARY, and set the bits back into the arithmetic.
"He still receives ten thousand," Dodd said. "Seven thousand of it consumes Band B. If any other aunt has been kind since he was a colt, those bits are already on his card, and I will need her name, the year, and the amount, including cider if the cider had a price."
Ash has one aunt with a sack and one uncle who sends jars. Once Dodd writes the card, it will show 7,000 of 40,000. What remains is the sum that side of the family may still hand him before a third of anything further becomes a bill. The card stays open past January. Ceilings move when the board calls a meeting. This board has not called one.
Ash read the slip on his lunch bucket, beside a cold potato.
"I can't set aside a tax on a sack I haven't lifted," he said. "They've written me down for seven thousand bits of nephew. The room is still 190, due Friday."
Holm asked if she could cover any levy that landed. Dodd said the statute bills the pony who receives. Pay it for him and the payment is another gift, and that gift can climb the same ceiling. The worked example on the reverse uses a nephew, an aunt, and a round sum, and the nephew finishes poorer than the heading promised. Holm put that page under the twine.
If Alden Holm gives half under his own name, he is a second giver, with a second kindness saucer of 3,000. Six thousand falls away and four thousand sticks. The path needs two forms. The Holms keep one purse, in a tin behind the press ledger. Dodd said the office grades the name on the line.
Band B also counts any gift a grandparent made when Ash was too young to count. He knows of none. A running balance leaves the office only after a pony files to ask.
Chair Vesper Lang of the Kin Levy sent the afternoon packet with one sentence in it. "Family transfers and civic investment share a synergy that keeps the bit base resilient," Lang wrote. The packet left Ash's line blank.
The same docket released the spring pageant draw. Mayor Pippin Pines' office had already signed the fireworks contract. The draw moved 86,000 bits for bunting, guest stalls, and the rockets, and the vote took one reading. Holm's sack is still on the table. Ash will leave it there while the blank on his card might become a bill.
Friday's wage will reach him with the wage levy already gone. The gift levy waits past that envelope. Last week the pageant committee added 4,200 bits for bunting after a wind, and the revision cleared before supper. Ash's card was blank this morning. The saucer stamp was already inked.