Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 214 Open the skylight and speak eloquently

It is said that there were 4 million mu of cleared land in the Hongwu Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty, but later it fell to more than [-] million mu.

By the time of Wanli's six-year clearing, the statistics were 7.58 million mu.

If one mu of silver is collected for one money, 8000 million taels can be collected for Hongwu's farmland that year, and 580 million taels can be collected for Wanli's cleared farmland.

But the problem is that taxes are getting less and less every year. Wanli and Chongzhen are only more than 2000 million a year, and industrial and commercial taxes are still added.

Here comes the big problem.

Liu Zongzhou, Qi Biaojia, Song Zhipu are also very aware of the problem here.

"Your Highness, the number of acres of land in Hongwu includes fields, ponds, etc. In addition to fields that can grow wheat and rice to produce grain, the land is generally planted with mulberry, hemp, tea trees." Liu Zong said thoughtfully.

And Song Zhipu told Zhu Yihai, "There are also large and small acres in different places. There are 240 steps per mu, and there are also 360 steps per mu..."

According to them, there is actually not so much plowing.

In Wanli's more than 4 million mu of grain-bearing fields, there is also a problem of size and size, and there is also a tiankeng, which is You Mian.

The land of the royal family of the imperial vassal did not pay the land tax.

Officials and gentry also have a large number of preferential and exemption quotas, and there are also various official lands.

Therefore, after deducting these, the total amount of land taxes that can actually be collected after Wanli's large-scale cleanup is not as much as imagined.

Song Zhipu also directly presented a set of data to Zhu Yihai. According to the records of the Ming Dynasty, the tax revenue in the six years of Wanli was 406 million shi for wheat, 2264 million shi for rice, and 1644 million taels of silver, of which 35 shi for wheat and 400 million shi for rice Jinhuayin is shipped at 124 million taels.

In addition, 44.3 taels of silver equivalent to silk cloth were collected.

There are more than 200 million shi of rice in Tuntian, more than 200 million shi of wheat, and more than 266 million taels of silver equivalent to grass.

170 million taels of Ma Zheng and husband’s labor,

Sangonghuangzhuang grain grain 4.9 hours.

以上合计2080.2万两，其中银337.8万两、米2073.3万石、麦587.6万石、草1414.2万束及其他杂项。

The salt class is 137.3 million taels, the tea class is 2.6 taels, and the smelting class is 16.5 taels.

The ship banknote merchant tax is 45.7 taels.

……

"That's not a lot!" Zhu Yihai was a little surprised when he heard the number.

The agricultural tax was 2080.2 million taels, the industrial and commercial tax was 223.8 million taels, and the miscellaneous income was 348.7 million taels. The total fiscal and tax revenue was 2652.6 million taels. From the perspective of composition, the Ming Dynasty’s finances mainly relied on agricultural taxes, accounting for 78.4% of the total revenue.

But 600 million taels a year is indeed a lot.

Although the salt tax is only more than 100 million taels, and the tea class is more than 2 taels, there are at least tens of millions of taels in it.

The tax in the sixth year of Wanli was only about one-eighth of that of the Northern Song Dynasty and one-fourth of that of the Qing Dynasty.

After Chongzhen came to power, theoretically, his annual income was more than 2000 million taels of silver, but in fact, there were serious arrears and insufficient collection.

However, military expenditures have been rising steadily, and a Guanning Army costs several million taels a year.

During the Chongzhen Dynasty, the industrial and commercial tax could hardly be collected, and the salt tea and industrial and commercial taxes were even greatly reduced. For example, the salt tax in Yunnan and the tea tax in Zhejiang were reduced by more than half.

Therefore, in the Chongzhen Dynasty, the original taxes could not be levied, and on the other hand, millions of millions of additional taxes were levied.

The imperial court has indeed been at a loss for a long time.

There are several major problems in Chongzhen's financial collapse. The first is the huge increase in expenditure, especially to fight against the thieves inside and outside to fight against the Qing captives. The military expenditure remains high every year.

However, taxes were owed and could not be collected seriously, especially as the prestige of the imperial court declined, the gentry everywhere owed taxes and evaded taxes, and local officials desperately squeezed the common people, taking advantage of this to levy additional apportionments.

Now Zhu Yihai has only half of his country left, and the total amount of taxes that can be collected has been greatly reduced, which is even more difficult than the situation in Chongzhen.

If you can't collect taxes again, you will be finished.

"Let's keep it simple. We will levy the tax amount in the Wanli year. After that, all the additional levies and apportionments added by Tianqi Chongzhen will be cancelled, including the three rates."

The problem now is not to increase new taxes, but to collect the basic ones first.

Let the gentry pay taxes and reduce the burden on the common people.

For example, take the average number of various corvee labor in Yanzhou Prefecture during the Wanli period, and then spread it into all the counted acres of Yanzhou Prefecture.

Exorbitant and miscellaneous taxes will be cancelled, and the taxes will be divided into mu and collected together.

For example, the government of Yanzhou is discounted by one penny per mu, and the 10,000+ two levies will be collected first.

If it is not enough, make up for it from the aspects of salt, tea, industry and commerce.

It turns out that these taxes have been killed by the gentry, but here is a tax warehouse of at least 3000, [-] million taels or more.

Moreover, the collection of industrial and commercial taxes will not increase the burden on ordinary people compared to the increase of land tax.

"The land is united, and the land is divided into acres. This money must be collected in full, but it does not have to be shipped and handed over. It is necessary to increase the land reserve. My lonely plan is to tax four points, one point for domestic funds, and one point for domestic funds. It will be transported from the national treasury, and one part will be kept in the province, and the other part will be left in the prefecture and county."

"The fire consumption belongs to the public, and the same four points."

"As for the specific ratio of four points, [-]% will be donated, [-]% will go to the national treasury, [-]% will be kept in the province, [-]% will be in the government, and [-]% will be in the county."

This financial distribution has been increased to localities by a lot compared with the original one.

In the past, there were no [-]% in total, but now Zhu Yihai actually gave [-]%.

If calculated on the basis of 8000 million, the local government can keep 3000 million.

Yanzhou prefecture is 10,000+ a year, 4% of prefectures and counties can also have [-] to [-] taels.

In addition, the fire consumption can also return three or four thousand, greatly increasing local fiscal revenue.

If the local industrial and commercial tax is also distributed according to this ratio, it can increase a lot.

Lijin proceeds are earmarked for special use, and all belong to the Royal Nutrition Soldiers.

"Your Highness is benevolent!" Liu Zongzhou praised endlessly. Since Wanli, the imperial court and the local government have added various factions, which have long been several times the official endowment.

If it is removed, it will indeed reduce many burdens on the people.

Qi Biaojia asked, "Now we want to restore ZTE and use troops to fight wars, what should we do if we don't have enough expenses? Now we are reducing the shipping quota and increasing local reserves, and how to solve the problem without increasing levy and apportionment. Wouldn't it still be empty talk if we never increase taxes?"

"We should live within our means and use our finances as rationally as possible. We will adjust the taxes for industry, commerce, salt, tea, customs, banknotes, etc., and we will never levy additional land taxes."

"If it's not enough, borrow money."

Borrowing must be repaid, but tax increases do not have to be repaid.

Zhu Yihai's attitude is already very clear, don't squeeze the common people anymore, they have already been squeezed dry, and in the future they will focus on land taxation, abolish the poll tax, and at the same time collect taxes on the industrial and commercial industries that have been abolished by the gentry. It can be equivalent to the agricultural tax and walk on two legs.

There was a gentry landowner and a poor old man's family,
In the past, a poor old man’s family had many sons but no land. They worked in the fields and had to bear heavy corvees. They couldn’t survive the oppression. The sons were all bachelors and could not marry wives. The family lived in a simple shack and had two meals a day. Wild vegetable porridge is on the verge of fleeing or even rebelling at any time.

It’s all right now, after you have no land, you don’t have to pay the original Dingyin. Now you only need to pay the landlord’s land rent, and the rest can be used to marry your son’s wife, and even save to build an adobe thatch house, or buy some cloth for new clothes.

As for the landowner with [-] mu of land, he was originally a scholar. He was exempted from [-] mu of land, [-] mu of land, and Junyao, so he paid some lijia and miscellaneous silver. In fact, he may not have paid at all. Pass.

But now, 960 mu of preferential exemption is subtracted from [-] mu of land, and the remaining [-] mu has to be paid.
If one acre of land is paid one penny, that is 96 taels of silver.

There is 30 taels of silver more than before.

It is equal to three taels plus one tael.

In contrast, the former poor family had no land and no land, and the corvee labor that was paid for every penny was now liberated.

For the landlord, there is a thousand mu of land, and the harvest is several thousand shi a year. Even if the rent is divided into [-]-[-], there is still one or two thousand shi.

Two or three stones are collected for one mu of land, and the levy is one dollar for silver. Even if it is one tael of silver for one stone, the tax rate is 5.00 tax to [-] tax one, not more than [-]%, which is definitely not high.

Poor households are freed after sharing their income into the mu, while wealthy households have little impact, but for the imperial court, the cost of taxation is firstly reduced. In the past, the poor could not afford to pay, so did they pay with their lives?Taxes are not collected uniformly, and the people are also oppressed.

The only problem is what to do with these landlords if they refuse to pay taxes.

After all, they had such a criminal record before, and they tried their best to avoid it, and even refused to pay it directly.

Liu Zongzhou and others have undoubtedly thought of this problem, which is the biggest obstacle under the new policy of never adding taxes and sharing the benefits.

"Do you now understand why Gu wants to set up a model in Yanzhou?" Zhu Yihai asked.

This is killing chickens and monkeys.

Reiterating the preferential and exempt rules is to let those gentry who default on payment understand that,

Yanzhou punished so severely, and even resorted to investigating 20-year-old debts and forcing them to make up the shortfall, these thunderous methods are just to make an example.

"A tenant pays three to five taels of levies and a small silver a year, and a hundred-mu landlord pays three to five taels of tax, money and grain per year, and a big landlord with a thousand acres of land pays three and fifty taels a year. Two denarii, whose burden do you think is greater?"

Obviously, the bigger the landlord, the smaller the burden.

The problem is so simple. It's not that everyone can't understand it. The key is that the bureaucratic landlords and scholar-bureaucrats who formulated the policies in the past were unwilling to bear even if the burden was small.

Even if the poor have nowhere to stand, they still want them to bear the burden for themselves.

This is human nature.

Zhu Yihai tore off the shame leaf, Liu Zongzhou and other literati were speechless.

Is Zhu Yihai's idea good?Very well, they couldn't refute it in their hearts.

But they are also aware of the resistance this new law may face.How many people are really willing to pay more for the country themselves?

But Zhu Yihai's words have been reminding them that if they don't change, they will perish, and it's time to change.

Is it true that when the Tartars take over the world, will they not be able to pay taxes?

Isn't Tartar knife fast?
At the risk of offending all landlords, gentry and bureaucrats in the world, Zhu Yihai still brought it up, indicating that it was indeed a last resort.

Just like a person who is extremely thirsty, he will drink poison to quench his thirst.

"Your Highness wants to rob the rich and help the poor." He Tengjiao said.

"Is it really more reasonable to levy taxes by dime, or by head? Isn't it more reasonable to levy taxes based on land occupation? What is the nature of tax?" Zhu Yihai asked rhetorically.

He Tengjiao replied that taxation is taxed according to Ding, which has been a practice since ancient times.

"Wrong, big mistake for privileges, collecting a tael of silver from a person with one or two taels of silver, this is murder and murder, collecting one or two taels of silver from a person with ten taels of silver, the burden is a bit heavy but still affordable, you can ask a person who has one or two taels of silver It is no problem for him to levy one tael from a person with 100 taels of silver. It has no effect on him to levy one tael from a person with 1000 taels of silver.”

"Over the past few years, the biggest problem in the Ming Dynasty has been the lack of money. Why was the lack of money? The Taizu established a system of light taxes and light taxes, but the country developed, and the court government was not enough for daily use, so it had to continue to levy more money from the people. This book Contrary to the original intention of Taizu's thin taxation and light taxation, the burden on the people continues to increase, and the increase in corvee is several times or even ten times the regular tax, is this reasonable?"

"It's unreasonable. Taxes need to be raised, not on the basis of the head, but on the basis of the amount of property. The rich will be taxed more, and the poor will be taxed less. This will last for a long time."

"In recent years, everyone pretended to be ignorant because they didn't want to pay for it, but they didn't want to think about it. If the Ming Dynasty were to perish, would they still have these generous benefits?"

"Today, I would like to ask you gentlemen, if the Jurchen Tartars are firmly established in the Central Plains, will they treat the gentry and powerful like the Ming Dynasty? Impossible, once the Tartars entered Beizhi, they ran around and encircled the land, captivating the common people. Slaves, you should have heard of these things, not to mention the Jinan massacre and Yangzhou massacre they made."

Zhu Yihai was very excited.

Daming's tax system is too anti-human. It just stares at the poor people to kill their wool, and even if they are bald, how much can they get out?
Leave the wool of those big fat sheep unattended, and in the end not only the bald and skinny sheep were squeezed out, but they also froze to death in the Little Ice Age. Those fattened sheep were only left to the Qing Dynasty At a low price, they killed sheep and skinned them to make fur coats, which not only warmed their bodies, but also ate fat lamb.

(End of this chapter)