Ming Dynasty: Ask Zhu Yuanzhang to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 150 The power of thunder, the sky has changed!

Although Zhu Yuanzhang has taken an iron-fisted approach to fighting corruption, in reality, the results are not as ideal as expected due to insufficient constraints on power.

The outbreak of the Guo Heng case is a clear proof of this.

If the officials were truly honest, such major cases would not have happened.

Even if Zhu Yuanzhang killed people and caused rivers of blood to flow, he could not stop the officials from making further moves.

At its root, the most important point is the lack of prior constraints on officials' exercise of power, but only ex post facto punishment.

It's like putting a pile of gold there but not assigning anyone to guard it.

Instead, they sent people to check from time to time to see if the gold was missing or had been stolen.

Then we will find out who stole the gold, and kill whoever is found out.

On the contrary, if nothing is found, then it will naturally be left unresolved.

The result of this was that gold was constantly stolen and thieves were constantly beheaded.

But as soon as the previous batch of thieves were killed, a new batch of thieves appeared.

There is no way to kill them all.

The unrestrained exercise of officials' power will inevitably lead to such consequences.

Killing and punishment afterwards can have a certain deterrent effect, but it is far from enough.

What is really useful is to limit its power at the beginning.

For example, letting the Ministry of Revenue be in charge of the court's revenue and expenditure as well as the national treasury would give the Ministry of Revenue an opportunity to embezzle.

Only by separating them can effective supervision be carried out.

As all companies in later generations know, an accountant and a cashier cannot be the same person.

Otherwise, no matter how much supervision is done, it will be ineffective.

Zhu Yunhuan was determined to reverse this situation and established the Ming Dynasty Taxation Commissioner, which was a crucial measure to transfer the power to collect commercial taxes from local to central governments.

Before this, there were two main disadvantages of commercial taxes.

One is double taxation.

Because commercial taxes are collected by local governments.

A businessman transports a batch of goods from Jinling City to Peking. He may need to pay taxes every time he passes through a place.

On the surface, a tax rate of one in thirty seems very low, but what if it is collected thirty times?
That tax rate is ridiculously high.

In fact, such situations are common in the Ming Dynasty today.

Even if a merchant had a tax payment certificate issued by the government, the government in another place would not recognize it.

Double taxation was very common in the Ming Dynasty at that time, and merchants had even become accustomed to it.

Secondly, there are many slaves of the powerful who help their families do business and they don’t pay taxes at all.

Government officials in all places turned a blind eye and pretended not to see anything.

The establishment of the Ming Dynasty Taxation Bureau was precisely to solve these two problems: non-taxation and double taxation.

Collect taxes from the powerful and wealthy, and take the power to levy taxes away from local officials.

This is different from Daming Bank and Daming Daily.

The latter two occupy the original blank areas and basically do not harm any vested interests.

Without fierce conflicts, it will naturally be easier to implement.

But the Ming Dynasty’s Tax Commissioner is different.

As the saying goes, cutting off someone's financial resources is like killing his parents.

The Commissioner of Taxation is "grabbing money" and "seizing power" at the same time!
It is conceivable that it will face bloody storm.

Of course, Zhu Gaochi, who had just been given the power to be in charge of the Commissioner of Taxation, was completely unaware of this.

Naughty kids are always fearless and will climb up the roof and tear down the tiles for no reason, not to mention that they are in power now.

As for the Jinyiwei, they are supposed to do the dirty work, so naturally they wouldn't care.

Of course, Zhu Yunhuan only temporarily borrowed the Jinyiwei to establish his authority.

The future Commissioner of Taxation will still have to build up his own team.

Zhu Gaoxu and Jiang Li could help arrest people and kill people to establish their authority, but more specific and detailed business work required other capable officials to do.

On the second day, the Ming Daily published the court's decision to establish the Ming Taxation Bureau, transferring the power to collect commercial taxes from local governments to the Taxation Bureau.

Of course, the Ming Dynasty was too large, and the branches and corresponding agencies of the Taxation Commissioner had not yet been extended throughout the entire Ming Dynasty.

The current area of jurisdiction is still only Jinling City and its suburbs.

Only later will it slowly expand to the entire Ming Dynasty.

Early in the morning, Crown Prince Zhu Yunhuan personally came to the newly established headquarters of the Taxation Bureau to attend the establishment ceremony of the Taxation Bureau.

After the ceremony, Zhu Yunhuan had two thick boxes of documents carried out from the lobby of the Taxation Department.

"These are the criminal clues related to the collection of commercial taxes that I have collected in the past few months."

"There are cases where merchants evaded taxes, local tax collectors condoned and protected illegal merchants, and there were also cases where tax collectors oppressed good merchants and arbitrarily increased taxes."

"Now that the Ming Dynasty's Taxation Department has been established, you should follow the clues provided here and investigate the illegality of officials and the tax evasion of merchants."

This is of course all thanks to Yao Guangxiao's Intelligence Department.

What businessmen do is no secret.

On the contrary, many people like to spread it around as a topic of conversation after dinner.

The scale of the Investigation Department is not small now, and it has collected a lot of information without much effort.

However, the information obtained can only be regarded as clues, not conclusive evidence.

However, with these clues, the tax department will naturally be able to investigate more efficiently.

Since deciding to change the commercial tax, Zhu Yunhuan has been holding back, and collecting these clues is one of the reasons.

The Commissioner of Taxation had to seize power from local authorities while also striking at big businessmen who had support and protection behind them. If he did not take action, it would be fine, but if he did take action, he had to do it with lightning speed.

There is no way those people will obey you.

They did not dare to openly confront the court.

But not confronting openly does not mean that there is no other solution.

Sometimes, soft confrontation is often more troublesome than hard confrontation.

After all, they still have things to do.

There are policies and measures to counter.

This is a tradition since ancient times.

According to common sense, after the establishment of the Commissioner of Taxation, the simplest and quickest way is to transfer the tax collectors in charge of collecting commercial taxes in local government offices directly to the Commissioner of Taxation. From then on, they will no longer be under the jurisdiction of local government offices, but will be directly under the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Taxation.

This way, commercial taxes can be taken over as quickly as possible.

This has also been the traditional method.

Even in later societies, this is basically what people do.

But after much thought, Zhu Yunhuan decided to start a new business.

The Ming Dynasty's tax bureau must not only be one of the most feared departments in the Ming Dynasty, but also the most honest department in the Ming Dynasty. However, collusion between local tax collectors and merchants has long been a common practice.

Even though Zhu Rongji has an iron fist and uses ruthless means to fight corruption, in reality this kind of thing cannot be stopped at all.

Because commercial taxes are different from land taxes and farm taxes.

There are fixed quotas for the land tax and land tax to be levied, and there is not much room for interference even if there is any attempt to do so.

If they really want to increase taxes blatantly, it means they think Zhu's butcher knife is not sharp enough.

However, the collection of commercial taxes is often extremely arbitrary. From assessing the value of goods to whether to recognize tax receipts issued by other local authorities, tax collectors can usually make decisions at will.

A batch of goods was worth two thousand taels of silver in Nanjing and five thousand taels of silver in Peking.

The tax rate of one in thirty is levied. Is it based on Nanjing's or Beijing's?

There are no specific provisions in the court's laws and regulations.

To put it bluntly, there is too much flexibility in law enforcement and the scope of operation is too large.

Corruption becomes inevitable.

If we transfer the original tax collectors and assign them to new departments, will these people become honest and enforce the law impartially overnight?

It's obviously impossible.

Instead, it will bring bad practices into the newly established Taxation Department and pollute the environment of the Taxation Department.

It would be better to just recruit again.

Zhu Gaoxu's eyes lit up: "Since we have a clue, what are we waiting for? Jinyiwei will immediately investigate and arrest the person for interrogation. Once the facts are confirmed, we will punish him strictly according to the law, behead him and confiscate his property."

He is already sharpening his knife and can't wait.

Although this naughty kid is naughty, he still has some skills and abilities.

He especially enjoys murder and property seizure.

It was quickly arranged.

Tax collection officials from the Department of Taxation began to collect taxes at docks, city gates, and other important locations.

They officially started issuing invoices in duplicate as proof of taxation.

This was of course also the idea that Zhu Yunhuan came up with.

As long as you hold the tax payment invoice, you can travel freely throughout the Ming Dynasty without having to worry about double taxation.

At the same time, the Jinyiwei went out in full force to arrest illegal businessmen and tax collectors who colluded with them and committed corruption and abuse of power.

In an instant, the city of Jinling was in turmoil.

The Tax Commissioner's show of force caught everyone off guard.

The speed was so fast, like a sudden drop of thunder.

Many unscrupulous businessmen were thrown into jail before they had the chance to find out the true situation of the tax commissioner.

The south gate of Jinling City, at the city gate.

A group of merchants were escorting dozens of carts of goods into the city but were stopped by officials from the Tax Commissioner.

"Hey, has the tax collector at the city gate been replaced?"

The leading vendor looked surprised.

Officials come and go, but clerks remain.

It is normal for officials to be transferred here and there, but clerks at the lower levels usually rarely change.

I don’t know why someone changed today.

He walked up to the new tax collector calmly, took out a stack of new banknotes from his pocket and handed it over.

"This money is for tea, brothers." The vendor whispered, "Our goods are..."

Before he could finish his words, he was interrupted by the tax collector.

“No matter whose goods they are, they will be taxed.”

"Also, please take back the money. Otherwise, don't blame me for being ruthless and charging you with bribery."

The vendor's expression suddenly changed.

He slipped money to the tax collector to save himself the trouble.

After all, even though he has someone supporting him from above, he cannot offend the people working below him.

Convenient with others, convenient with yourself.

When doing business, harmony always brings wealth.

Only when everything is taken care of properly can everything go smoothly.

But if the tax collectors were so ungrateful, that would be another matter.

Do you really think he is afraid of a small tax collector?

"You better think it over. Do you really want to collect taxes from us?" The vendor threatened with a sullen face: "Believe it or not, if you take the money today, you will have to return it tonight. You will not be able to work here tomorrow!"

The tax collector was stunned for a moment, then burst into laughter.

"Then I want to see which adult is so majestic?"

He raised his thumb, pointed over his shoulder, and said, "Open your eyes wide and look at the city gate. What is hanging there?"

The vendor looked in the direction the tax collector pointed, and what he saw was a string of human heads hanging on tall flagpoles, which was a shocking sight.

There was a government notice posted at the foot of the city wall. Someone was reading the notice and pointing at the human head hanging above.

"The tax collector at the city gate was chopped off by the Royal Guards for corruption and abuse of power, and his head was displayed to the public."

"Also killed were many unscrupulous businessmen and the people who supported them!"

"If you want to hang your head on it, go ahead and try."

"And the adult behind you."

The tax collector took out a copy of the Ming Daily and pressed it on the tax registration table. He sneered and said, "It seems that you have come to Jinling City from other places. I'm afraid you haven't read the latest Ming Daily yet?"

"Your Highness, the Crown Prince will reform the commercial tax. From now on, the commercial tax will be collected directly by the Ming Dynasty's tax bureau, and local government offices are not allowed to interfere."

"The lord behind you, if you think there is something wrong with my tax collection, you can go to the Taxation Department and talk to the young prince, or go to the East Palace and talk to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince."

"Have His Royal Highness write a handwritten letter to exempt you from commercial taxes."

"Otherwise, just pay your taxes honestly."

The vendor's heart suddenly skipped a beat.

His Royal Highness the Crown Prince has been calling for a change in commercial taxes for months, but to no avail there has been only rumbling thunder and no rain.

But looking at the booming Ming Bank and Ming Daily, it is clear that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince will not always ignore the issue of commercial taxes.

I just don't know when and how it will be done.

Are you finally taking action now?

He established the Taxation Department and directly seized the power of local governments to collect commercial taxes... and he also killed so many people, what a big move!

He murmured to himself, "The sky has changed!"

……

(End of this chapter)