Chapter 51: The powerful evade taxes, and the honest and fawning people become the 'rich class'
Ying Tianfu's colleague replied: "Your Highness, you don't know something. Tea merchants are not only responsible for supplying the needs of the imperial court, but also the government.
Crops such as tea trees, which depend on the weather, need to be harvested depending on the quality of the year.
But whether local officials or the palace, they often set quotas based on the group with the highest yield among the tea gardens.
This resulted in a large number of tea gardens being unable to meet such output. Once people were sent by Qian to become tea households, their whole family might be trapped to death by the tea trees.
Tea trees can grow for hundreds of years, but ordinary people don't have to wait that long.
Even if it is a good tea garden, no common people dare to take over it.
Even the local tea merchants are scornful of this kind of sect.
It is very reasonable to customize the tax amount at an inappropriate time and not according to the year.
The Lijia system and the laws of service gradually became a heavy task that was difficult for the people to complete.
Even so, the imperial court doesn't care whether the people below can implement tough collection.
The officials below did not dare not to complete it.
Immediately, quite bad practices occurred.
Often when officials at the county level would force the local grain chief or deputy householder to spend money across regions to buy tea to complete the quota.
And the quotas they force the grain chief to fulfill will be completely passed on to other ordinary people.
They often collect more grain under various names to make up for their losses. "
When Tongzhi Ying Tianfu said this, he felt a little emotional, "Your Majesty, Your Highness, to be honest, even if there are these factions and these people on equal terms, our Ming Dynasty can still hold on, but in the future, it may not be possible.
If the current situation continues to develop, if no changes are made.
Even in terms of taxation, it is difficult for Da Ming Dynasty to support it. "
What Ying Tianfu's colleague Ge Youmin said may be a bit radical, but it has to be said that he got to the point.
Because the Ming Dynasty is probably one of the few in the unified dynasty that had such a chaotic tax system.
The rulers of the dynasty often took land tax and population tax too seriously, and even introduced a number of household registration management policies to restrict the movement of people in order to ensure that these two taxes could be collected in full.
But this often backfires, and land tax will become less and less because land annexation will not stop.
It does seem like this is a big problem.
Zhu Yuanzhang could not think of what method should be used to solve this problem.
Zhu Biao also fell into a blind spot of knowledge at this time.
The only thing the two of them could think of was to ask Chen Han what methods future generations would use to solve the chaotic financial system.
Zhu Yuanzhang and his son were quite surprised until now.
Originally, they saw that Linghan needed a lot of money to build Nayashan Village, so they asked the Ministry of Household Affairs for money. The Ministry of Household Affairs in turn passed it on to the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Industry, letting the father and son understand that the tax system of the Ming Dynasty was very confusing.
So on the first day of the establishment of the cabinet, I wanted to ask these officials from the bottom what they thought of the current tax system.
Because Zhu Yuanzhang grew up under this tax system, he hated the exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes above.
However, Zhu Yuanzhang was limited by his own knowledge and experience.
In addition to adhering to this top-down tax system of collecting physical goods for thousands of years, he could not find a second alternative.
He is not particularly able to clearly understand the logic behind taxation.
All he knows is that if we suspect you are engaging in malpractice for personal gain, we will kill you.
As a result, after explaining and clarifying the basic logic to them through Xia Yuanji and Ying Tianfu, he discovered the reason why the common people were assessed so much tax.
It's not just officials who are causing trouble, but maybe there's something wrong with the tax is the top-down pressure, which leads to a vicious cycle caused by corruption, clever pretexting, and various inappropriate collections that do not reflect the good or bad times of the year.
Originally, grain production had good years and poor years, which he knew very well as a farmer.
The same goes for various crops.
However, the fixed amount of tax collection is not flexible at all according to the good or bad years.
As a result, many people were unable to meet their quotas and had to sell their land.
Zhu Yuanzhang knew this. He had repeatedly issued edicts not to disturb the people, but to levy taxes according to the good or bad times.
But the lower government officials couldn't do it at all, because there were many assessments that couldn't be calculated at all.
Under high pressure from Zhu Yuanzhang himself, officials could only work hard to complete their achievements.
He finally figured out why his family ended up like that.
Why did I originally have a share of land and a share of land, and I could have been self-sufficient, but in the end I couldn't help but sell the fields and land and became a tenant farmer in the landlord's family.
But even if you become a sharecropper, the taxes imposed on you will still exist.
As for big landowners like Liu De, the richer they are, the more food they should pay.
But they discovered that Liu De had not paid at all.
Only now have I finally figured out the internal logic.
In fact, it is the big landowners who have been colluding with the government to change their household registration levels into lower household registrations.
As a result, their family paid less for food, and the children of his family did not need to bear such heavy corvees and errands.
And often honest people without a backer can only report truthfully.
Therefore, they became the 'rich class' and became the major contributors to corvee and grain payment.
After Zhu Yuanzhang thought about this, he finally discovered a big problem.
That is, if this tax system is not changed, sooner or later it will become one of the main culprits in the collapse of the Ming Dynasty.
But now the father and son were thinking about it and couldn't find a better solution. They could only think of asking Chen Han if there was a better solution.
After questioning the cabinet, Zhu Yuanzhang and his son told Xia Yuanji and others to start handling some government affairs in accordance with the basic operating system of the cabinet.
Then the two of them came to the Sixth Department.
I asked the Ministry of Finance first.
Zhao Mian, the Minister of Household Affairs, was also greatly surprised when he heard that Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly understood the underlying logic of the tax system.
Unexpectedly, overnight, it seemed that the emperor and the prince understood their difficulties in collecting land taxes.
Zhao Mian, the Minister of Household Affairs, said directly, "Your Majesty, you are right. The Lijia System and the Service Law were originally very good systems. The people paid the government a certain proportion of the crops produced in the fields.
On the one hand, it reduces the needs of the lower government offices, and on the other hand, the servants can also reduce a lot of burden on the common people.
At the same time, it also provided free personnel for the government.
Both the government and the people should benefit.
It's just as Your Majesty said, untimely quotas and income increases regardless of good or bad years are the real culprits that undermine the system and the law of service. "
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(End of this chapter)