Chongzhen revived the Ming Dynasty

The nobles were not unprepared for their criticism of the civil officials.

They have a group of people who give advice on matters that concern their own interests.

As the leader of the nobles today, Duke of England Zhang Weixian saw that the nobles could not compete with the civil officials, so he said slowly:
"Yan Shenggong has 2,000 hectares of sacrificial land!"

The civil servants in the court suddenly became silent, and thought of this special title.

With the over 2,000 hectares of sacrificial land owned by the Duke of Yansheng, what does it matter if the nobles own over 100 hectares of land?

The Kong family of Yanshenggong has been passed down for more than 2,000 years, and they have been nobles for more than 200 years!

Isn't it reasonable for him to own one-tenth of the title land and estate of Duke Yansheng?

Some civil officials wanted to confuse the past and distinguish between sacrificial land and noble land, but the nobles ignored this and kept harping on the 2,000 hectares of sacrificial land of the Kong family, Duke of Yansheng, and kept saying the same thing:

"Duke Yansheng has 2,000 hectares of sacrificial land!"

This made some civil officials furious. Kong Zhenyun, who was born in the Kong family of Quzhou, had to stand up and say:

"The more than 2,000 hectares of sacrificial land of Duke Yansheng was given by Taizu and previous emperors for the purpose of offering sacrifices to the holy temple."

"Juetian is different and cannot be generalized."

Zhang Weixian said slowly:
"We also have to offer sacrifices to our ancestors on the land in our family."

"The Great Saint and Master have made contributions to the world, and our ancestors have also made contributions to the Ming Dynasty."

“The ancestors worshipped in the family temple also need to be worshipped and offered sacrifices.”

This reason is so powerful that many civil servants are speechless:

They couldn't support the worship of Duke Yansheng while opposing the worship of ancestors by the nobles.

Moreover, some smart people even saw a way to break through the land tax -

That is to ask the emperor to relax the restrictions on land acreage in the name of offering sacrifices to the land.

The sacrificial land is not owned by a single household. The emperor cannot impose strict restrictions and levy property taxes on land over 100 acres, right?

Therefore, these people temporarily gave up the constraints on the nobles and instead asked the emperor to continue to implement preferential treatment for public fields such as sacrificial fields, charity fields, and school fields, and to reduce or exempt the property taxes on these fields.

Zhu Youjian did not expect that the civil officials and nobles would suddenly unite in the midst of their discussion and attack him in the name of offering sacrifices to the land.

In this era of believing in loyal ministers and filial sons, it is impossible for him to oppose the activities of ancestor worship. However, opening up the field for sacrifice may bring many disadvantages.

However, after hearing the almost unanimous request from his ministers, he decided to make a concession to reduce the pressure of implementing the property tax and issued the order:

"For public lands such as sacrificial land, charity land, and school land, the minimum land tax threshold can be set at 1,000 mu."

"But one thousand acres is also the limit. You are not allowed to exceed this number. And like the land of nobles, you must pay a 10th tax to me."

"Mr. Liu is in charge of drafting the management methods for these public fields."

"We can follow the example of Fan Wencheng's Yizhuang and formulate more complete etiquette and laws."

This decision made all the ministers very happy.

Because in this way, some families with more than 100 acres of land can legitimately use the names of sacrificial land, school land, etc. to avoid the so-called property tax.

Many officials in the court can benefit from this.

As for the limit of one thousand acres, not many people care about it, because even among the ministers, many people actually own less than one thousand acres of land - if it is said that landlords in the Ming Dynasty own more than one hundred acres of land, the proportion of the population may reach two to five percent.

Then the number of landowners with more than 1,000 acres of land is at most only one ten-thousandth of the population.

In the Ming Dynasty with a population of 10 million, there were not necessarily 1,000 households owning more than 1,000 acres of land.

Apart from royal families and nobles, few families owned so much land.

For example, Gu Yanwu was born into the Wujun Gu family, which was considered a prominent family in Jiangdong. His great-grandfather Gu Zhangzhi even served as the assistant minister of the Nanjing Ministry of War, and his generation still had some influence.

But his family's land is only 800 mu now. If he divides it into separate clans for sacrificial land, he can easily avoid the land tax.

It can be said that this policy was unanimously supported by all the officials. With tax avoidance methods, their resistance to the property tax was greatly reduced, and they began to accept this tax.

However, Zhu Youjian sighed in his heart, knowing that his land restriction this time was not thorough.

But no matter what, he insisted on the limit of one thousand acres, locking the maximum amount of land that ordinary people could own at one thousand acres.

In this way, when people become rich, they will not be able to focus on buying land, and their excess funds must be transferred to industry and commerce.

The target of the property tax also changed from the landlords to capital. Zhu Youjian now attached more importance to the two taxes of asset tax and inheritance tax, intending to use them to clamp down on the rising bourgeoisie and prevent these people from thinking of revolting after they have capital.

While these thoughts were running through his mind, Zhu Youjian heard some of his ministers requesting that eighty hectares of sacrificial land be preserved for the descendants of sages such as Yan Hui and Mencius.

He agreed to all of this, and asked the Sino-Agricultural Ministry to list the families with more than a thousand acres of land, and explain why they owned so much land. The Sino-Agricultural Ministry and the Imperial Household Department sent people to collect taxes together.

The land owned by these people will be subject to tithes in the future, and will be directly collected into the inner treasury and presented to the emperor.

The same goes for public fields such as sacrificial fields and school fields, which also paid tribute to him as the emperor.

Zhu Youjian planned to use this method to increase the revenue of the inner treasury, and at the same time let the Sino-Agricultural Temple impose restrictions on these lands.

After all, the more such fields there are, the more taxes the Sinong Temple will lose. There must be officials who are loyal to their duties to limit this type of land.

At the same time, Zhu Youjian asked Liu Zongzhou to formulate a complete ritual system to ensure that most of the income from public land could be used for public welfare rather than just for some people to evade taxes.

The atmosphere in the court turned peaceful, and after the request for the sacrificial land was met, the civil officials agreed to the number of land proposed by the nobles:
Except for the duke's land, which was limited to 100 hectares, they agreed to 75 hectares for the marquis and 50 hectares for the earl.

The total area of ​​the nobility's land and the manor's land did not exceed 200 hectares, which also continued the previous system.

There were even regulations that a viscount had 30 hectares of land, a baron had 15 hectares of land, and a knight had 5 hectares of land.

However, Zhu Youjian did not intend to convert the hereditary officials in the Central Plains into nobles. After his sons and daughters went overseas, their titles, fields and territories were divided according to their geographical location.

Therefore, this number of Duke Fields is basically meaningless now and will not be implemented at all.

The limit of hereditary land for hereditary officials was set at one thousand acres. Based on the land owned by each guard, land was allocated to hereditary officers, sergeants, and military households according to their ranks.

These fields also pay tithes, and the taxes go into the inner treasury.

Compared with the noble fields, manor fields and public fields, the military farms in the garrisons, totaling up to one or two million hectares, would become the main source of income for the inner treasury in the future.

Zhu Youjian also needed to safeguard the interests of these garrison officers and soldiers as his own base.

Therefore, with the unanimous cooperation of civil and military officials, the current targets of taxation are temples and Taoist temples.

The Ministry of Revenue intends to use these people as a training ground and start collecting property taxes. (End of this chapter)