eldest son of Ming dynasty

Chapter 956: Annual Revenue and Tax Law in the 35th Year of Zhengde

Chapter 956: Annual Revenue and Tax Law in the th Year of Zhengde

"Your Majesty, how are the preparations for Father's birthday celebration going?"

This is a scene that happened in the residence of the fifth prince, Prince Rui.

In the 31st year of the reign of Emperor Zhengde, the fifth son Zai was named Prince Rui by the emperor for his meritorious service in managing military farming in Liaodong. After returning from that time, he took up the post of the Ministry of Revenue as a prince.

At this time, Prince Rui was 27 years old, a strong young man. He was wearing a green python robe and stood very tall.

He looked up when he heard this question, "Why? Do you have a gift that will satisfy Father?"

The woman was less than 30 years old, with a beautiful face and graceful figure. She smiled and said, "Father doesn't like antiques and treasures, nor does he like rare stones and jade. No one can guarantee that Father will be satisfied. But I have heard of a man recently who is very good at mathematics and studying things. If he can make any new discoveries, Father will not be disgusted."

Zai Jian thought about it and shook his head. "It's better not to do such speculative things. This is not the result of my research. What's the point of talking about it? Besides, it's just a recommendation of a person. It can be done at ordinary times. Why postpone it until the birthday? You just take care of your family. I will make arrangements for celebrating your father's birthday."

The woman shrank her head at the tough tone in her husband's words.

"Also, the Wanshou Festival is approaching, and there will surely be many people from both China and abroad in the capital. During this period, people in the palace should try to go out as little as possible, and if they do go out, they should not cause trouble, especially not parading around in the name of Prince Rui's Palace!"

After saying this, Zai Jian went to the study.

He has a heavy job now. With the expansion of the country and the development of new forms of business, the Ministry of Revenue has too many things to take care of.

Especially when it comes to money, the emperor attaches great importance to it and cannot afford to make a mistake accidentally.

In the study, his left and right assistants were already there.

The Left Vice Minister was the famous Guan Yanqing, who was praised by the emperor more than ten years ago for having ideas in his head and the courage to put them into practice.

The Right Vice Minister was Gui E’s student at that time. His surname was Tian and his name was Zhengu.

Gui E was a man of strong character and fond of throwing tantrums. Zhu Houzhao first appointed him as the Minister of War and then as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was the 23rd year of the Zhengde reign. Unfortunately, he began to fall ill not long after and eventually died in the 26th year of the Zhengde reign at the age of 54.

The emperor had gradually gotten used to seeing people off, starting with Li Dongyang, Wang Ao, Xie Qian, and Yang Tinghe, and later on, Wang Shouren, Yang Yiqing, Gui E, Jiang Mian, and Gu Renyi...

Last year, in the 34th year of Zhengde, Zhang Cong also passed away in his hometown in Zhejiang.

The emperor was very sad and issued an edict to give Zhang Cong various posthumous honors for a civil official.

Wangfu Study,

After he came, Guan Yanqing and Tian Zhengu both stood up.

"Your Majesty."

In fact, they all originally had the qualifications to become the Minister of Revenue, but the prince was too noble, so there was nothing they could do.

"sit down."

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

After sitting down, the two looked at each other. Guan Yanqing said first: "Your Highness, the "Tax Code of the Ming Dynasty" is almost finished. I wonder when Your Highness will present it to the emperor for his review?"

Zai Jian sat upright. He always paid attention to his manners and etiquette. "Tax law is extremely important. Father has always attached great importance to it. In the past few years, the three of us have devoted ourselves to studying it day and night, and we find it even more complicated. As for this code, I would like to give it as a gift for the birthday of the king. Do you think it is okay?"

Tian Zhengu frowned slightly.

Zai Xian noticed it and raised his arm, "Minister Tian, ​​if you have something to say, just say it."

"Yes, Your Majesty, I think it is inappropriate."

"What's the reason?"

"I understand what Your Majesty means. Your Majesty does not like antiques, calligraphy and paintings, and has always put state affairs first. Giving this code as a gift not only conforms to His Majesty's wishes, but also no one else in the world has the ability to present such a gift except Your Majesty. However..."

He clicked his tongue and continued, "But I think that birthdays are birthdays, and state affairs are state affairs. Shouldn't the two be confused? Your Majesty, are you presenting this to ask the emperor to agree to the contents of this code? This is state affairs. With your majesty's emphasis on state affairs, you will never take it lightly. But this is a gift from your majesty on the birthday of the emperor. Due to the father-son relationship, your majesty has to take it seriously. This makes your majesty embarrassed. Moreover, if your majesty implements this code after the birthday, it is still good, but if not, what is the meaning of your gift?"

Zai Xian thought about it for a moment, but did not rush to deny it. "Minister Guan, what do you think?"

"I think it's OK." He smiled lightly, "Brother Tian, ​​all the civil and military officials in the court know that the emperor attaches great importance to state affairs, so no matter whether the emperor promotes this code or not, others will not find it strange. On the contrary, it would be strange if the emperor immediately agreed and issued an order to implement it. In this case, the key is not whether the code should be implemented."

"What's that about?"

"It depends on what the emperor thinks after receiving this gift and reading the contents of the code."

He didn't finish his words. The so-called how to think actually meant how to think of Prince Rui.

Zai'an pursed his lips and smiled. This was the reason why he was not in a hurry to deny it.

"Minister Tian, ​​this is not a new tax policy that I have formulated for the Ming Dynasty. Such power is in the hands of the emperor. How can I overstep my authority? This is just the summary and thinking of my management of the Ministry of Revenue for several years. It contains some drawbacks of the current tax law and corresponding solutions, that's all."

Tian Zhengu was stunned. As expected of Prince Rui, who was known for his wisdom, he had already thought about this question.

He truly deserves the word "Rui" bestowed by the emperor. Rui means wise and bright.

"If that's the case, I have no objection."

"Well, then the next question is whether this code is worthy of your father's reading."

Finance and tax laws, this has always been a huge problem.

Someone once concluded that in the last years of the empire, all of its outstanding problems were actually financial problems. The treasury was running out of money, and the tax system was basically corrupt. Money was needed everywhere but there was actually no money to pay, so the empire eventually fell into ruin.

The key lies in the formulation and implementation of the tax law system.

During the more than 30 years that Zhu Houzhao ascended the throne, his main tax reform directions were three.

The first is to merge the head tax into the land tax, which is actually the land tax per mu during the Yongzheng period.

After the head tax was nominally abolished, the idea that "more births mean more taxes" was dispelled, which led to the country's population growing continuously over the past 20 years.

In the 1.42th year of Zhengde's reign, the emperor ordered the first population census. This was a huge workload and it took two years, but in the end only % to % was completed, which was very good for the feudal bureaucratic system. The results at that time showed that the national population was approximately million.

It can be seen that it has increased significantly compared to when he ascended the throne.

Fortunately, the vast land in East Asia has a strong carrying capacity, and the country is prosperous and strong, so it can support people. In this case, a large population is not a burden, but a resource, a foundation, and the foundation of a great power's national strength.

Nowadays, there are people from the Ming Dynasty everywhere in the Western Regions, Mongolia, and Southeast Asia. With such a large population under the unified command of a central government, they will of course dominate everywhere.

The second reform direction is to shift from taxation in kind to taxation in cash.

This is also a long-term task. It was not originally required to be completed within three to five years. This is because the economic development levels of different regions are different, and ordinary people have no channels to obtain currency. Forced collection will only increase their burden.

But by the 35th year of Zhengde, except for a few isolated geographical areas, most parts of the country had completed the transition to taxation methods.

Its significance lies in simplifying the tax collection process. It may not seem like a big deal to modern people, but that's because the objects of comparison are different... Before this tax system, taxes were levied on land, labor was conscripted from households, and there were also numerous local products and tributes.

After all taxes are paid in cash, the names of all land taxes are unified, which can to a certain extent prevent tax officials from making up various names and manipulating the complicated tax process.

The simpler the tax system, the more efficient it is.

In fact, in history, this step was not achieved until Zhang Juzheng's reform. Before that, all dynasties had not been able to do so. It can be seen that this is not an easy task.

The third tax reform is commercial tax.

The commercial tax field also faced complicated tax law issues. Moreover, the commercial tax system was not taken seriously in the Ming Dynasty, and the methods of collecting taxes were limited. Therefore, from Hongwu to Hongzhi, there was no unified thinking and arrangement from top to bottom.

Generally speaking, according to the method and form of tax collection, commercial taxes can basically be divided into transit taxes, residence taxes, and special taxes such as salt, tea, and iron.

To pay taxes means to pay money, for example, setting up stalls to collect taxes at necessary nodes on water and land routes. There is even a tax called city gate tax, which requires paying money when passing through this gate.

Residential tax is levied on businesses with a fixed location, such as shops and stalls.

Zhu Houzhao adopted different approaches to these two taxes.

First, all taxes were basically abolished, especially the currency tariffs on inland canals, in order to promote the circulation of goods and trade. City gate taxes and the like were strictly prohibited.

The tax revenue loss of the inland river banknotes was replaced by the customs duties of the Shibosi. That is, if domestic merchants wanted to go out to sea, the goods on the ship, the destination, and the value had to be reported. It would be difficult for you to run such a big ship, right? The same was true for foreigners coming in. In this way, customs duties continued to grow and became the main force of commercial taxes.

This has two benefits:

First, those who can engage in maritime trade are generally wealthy families, and even if the officials extort a little from them, it will not cause any serious damage;

Second, make the country a unified market, that is, goods only need to pay taxes once at the customs when they leave and enter the country, instead of having to pay taxes at each customs checkpoint on the way. Having tax checkpoints everywhere is a sign of the end of the dynasty, and it will also breed local protectionism, making the provinces like two countries.

This is called simplification.

As for those merchants who only do business within the country, they face residence tax.

The ideal situation for collecting this part of tax is that you make money and I collect taxes. The more you make, the more I collect. If you lose money, you are tax-free.

However, the imperial court had no way of obtaining information such as the annual turnover and annual profits of tens of thousands of companies across the country. Even if it issued a death order requiring all companies to report their own taxes, there would still be a large number of companies that would not report profits or would underreport profits.

Therefore, it is very difficult to achieve this, and it is even impossible to do so under the current conditions. If the tax is collected based on profits, the result will be that housing taxes will be reduced year after year.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao retained the system of collecting housing tax as a whole, that is, it was collected in the same way as in the Song Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty. It was just that the details were constantly improved, such as stipulating the time and frequency of tax collection, in order to reduce the disturbance to merchants.

But as long as taxes are collected, it is impossible to make the tax officer a popular character. Now every county in the Ming Dynasty is equipped with two tax officers for the purpose of collecting taxes.

In general, the commercial tax system is not perfect, but it is the best we can do.

In fact, commercial tax revenue was extremely high during the Song Dynasty. It was nothing more than collecting taxes by setting up checkpoints and setting up stalls. Although the single tax rate was not high, the scope of tax collection was very wide, which meant that the single tax rate was small, but it was collected in many places.

At least there are no tax checkpoints everywhere in the Ming Dynasty now.

As for salt tax and tea tax, there is no need to say much. Nowadays, it has become the second most important commercial tax after customs duty.

However, the growth of salt tax was limited, because salt consumption was a rigid demand. Salt was already high, and it could not increase much more. By the 1.4th year of Zhengde, the salt tax had remained stable between 1.6 million and million for several consecutive years.

In comparison, customs duties increased significantly. Initially, they were converted into more than 4.8 million silver taels, equivalent to million silver dollars. However, by the th year of Zhengde, customs duties had grown to million yuan, and even became the main source of tax revenue for the country.

Housing tax was relatively low because Zhu Houzhao was more cautious and did not tend to charge too much miscellaneous taxes from small vendors. It basically remained around 2 million yuan.

In this way, the overall commercial tax can reach 8-9 million yuan per year.

Agricultural taxes have been continuously reduced. Since the 22nd year of Zhengde, it has been maintained at a ratio of 30 to 1 for more than ten years. This tax ratio is one of the lowest in all dynasties.

There is really no comparison during special periods. For example, Emperor Wen of Han announced the nationwide exemption of agricultural taxes.

The reason why the Ming Dynasty is so "generous" in agriculture is not only the rise of commercial taxes, but also the large tracts of arable land overseas.

The Ming Dynasty did not implement the low tax strategy here at all. For example, in Luzon, Java, Annan, etc., these places were all state-owned enterprises and private businessmen who purchased large tracts of land and then engaged in commercial cultivation. The overall scale has exceeded 100 million acres.

Commercial farming is a commercial behavior, not a farmer, so the tax ratio will be higher. In better places, the tax ratio is eight to one, and in worse places, the tax ratio is five to one. This is basically the tax ratio in the Suzhou and Songjiang areas.

You can survive by farming here, but it will definitely be a miserable life.

As for what to do if the price is too high and they don’t make money… the merchants don’t have to worry about this because they know that using slaves is not illegal.

Therefore, agricultural tax can basically catch up with commercial tax, and the annual revenue is about 6-8 million yuan.

By this calculation, the annual revenue of the Ming Dynasty from these two items alone was between 14 billion and 17 billion. This was the case in the st, nd, rd and th years of the Zhengde reign.

However, this is not all of the country's annual revenue, nor is it even the largest source of income.

The real big players were three government-run trading companies, namely the Nanyang Company, which dominated porcelain and silk, the Oriental Charm Company, which dominated refined salt and sugar, and the Long Distance Trading Company, which dominated the spice trade.

These three companies dangled the commodities that were coveted by the Western world in front of them, attracting the world's gold and silver to flow rapidly into the Ming Dynasty like a black hole.

In the eyes of Zai'an, the current head of the Ministry of Revenue, the Ming Dynasty has not only changed the silver shortage of the past thousand years, but has entered a situation of silver surplus.

Moreover, they also knew that there were super silver mines in the New World. Since they could dig, why would they exchange goods? It didn't matter if they went to rob. Anyway, those Westerners acted like pirates. If you didn't rob them, they would rob you.

If they hadn't fought a few naval battles, they wouldn't have been so honest.

So three years ago, under the promotion of Prince Rui, the Ming Dynasty began to adjust its maritime trade model. It no longer simply accepted silver, but required another form of wealth, real wealth.

For example, food, wine, slaves, or even a certain technology, and of course, gold is also acceptable.

These things are only valuable after being purchased by Ming Dynasty merchants.

At the Tianjin Port, just next to the capital, the Ming Dynasty opened a new Maritime Customs Office, where millions of dan of grain were unloaded every year. These were not necessarily just rice and flour, but also crops such as corn and potatoes, which were already flowing in as commodities.

Food will not be wasted because if people cannot eat it, they can give it to animals.

Merchants were able to discover the business opportunities here. Since the grains bought at low prices could not be sold at high prices, they changed their breeding methods and the scale of breeding of chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep all increased.

But the price of meat is high when it is sold outside.

These three companies were not under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Revenue, so Zai Jian had no idea of ​​their specific circumstances. However, the emperor still kept official business to himself and would order the three companies to pay profits and taxes to the national treasury every year.

And its scale has not been less than 10 billion for several years.

The country was in a good situation, and it was hard for Zai'an to be incompetent as the Minister of Revenue. When he took over, the country's annual revenue was around 22 billion yuan, and now it has reached 26 billion yuan a few years later.

At the same time, expenses are manageable.

In the original history, the Ming Dynasty's expenses mainly came from three sources: the first was the salaries of the royal family and vassal states, the second was military pay, and the third was official salaries.

The salaries of the royal family and vassal states can now be ignored.

Official salaries have been raised several times, and now they are only about 5 million yuan. During the Zhengde period, some people calculated that there were about 2 civil officials and 4 military officials. This is a huge increase compared to the less than 10 during the Hongwu period, especially since several emperors granted official positions lavishly. Zhu Houzhao has been managing the phenomenon of redundant officials. Although he cannot reduce the number of officials as much as during the Hongwu period, it is still possible to maintain 3 to 5.

The average annual salary of such an official is around 10,000 yuan, which is more than enough for their expenses.

But the rest cannot all be used as military pay.

In fact, the expenditure is a little different from before. Before Hongzhi, the local governments in the Ming Dynasty took care of themselves.

Because the taxes were initially paid in kind, which was not convenient to transport, local governments would keep the money for their own expenses before paying the taxes. As a result, the Ming Dynasty treasury always looked very tight.

However, after Zhu Houzhao reformed the tax law, all taxes were paid in cash, and even the development of banks allowed local tax collectors to deposit money directly locally.

Then this money cannot be kept by the local governments, but should all be collected by the central government, which will then allocate the money according to demand.

This is also a manifestation of the centralization of imperial power. After all, local governments at all levels need to apply for funds to carry out their work, so it is of course easier to control.

Therefore, the expenditure should include the budget of local governments, which is not small. Small places spend tens of millions, large places spend hundreds of millions, and dozens of places add up to a billion.

The remaining 10 billion yuan of annual revenue can be spent on military salaries, but of course not all of it, in recent years it has been around 8 million yuan. After all, there are still some major projects that need investment.

However, due to inflation and obvious currency depreciation, the 8 million yuan cannot be considered the original 8 million taels of silver. Such a huge military expenditure is really exaggerated. There is no standard for the specific calculation. We can only use the prices of some commodities thirteen years ago for comparison. In fact, it is only about million taels.

But even so, the treasury of the Ming Dynasty today is definitely not empty.

Zai'an's position as the Minister of Revenue was not actually that difficult, it was just that he put too much pressure on himself. Not only that, he calmed down and studied it and discovered many problems in the current tax system, as well as the extravagant lifestyle that was getting worse and worse despite the emperor's repeated warnings, which concerned him the most.

Actually, he didn't really care about the other parts of the tax code that he wrote.

It's just that business has been booming over the years, and businessmen have accumulated too much wealth, but the taxes they bear are nothing compared to those of the farmers who grow crops. This is really unreasonable.

Guan Yanqing and Tian Zhengu also had the same idea, so they always paid more attention to this aspect when they were carefully polishing the code.

Zai Jian smiled and said, "If this new tax law is approved by my father, the merchants in the world will hate me to death."

"For businessmen to interfere in politics is a way to death. Even if you come before the emperor, the prince will stand firm."

Yes, that's why they are relatively relaxed.

Guan Yanqing concluded, "In that case, the matter of the code is settled. In addition, the annual revenue for the 34th year of Zhengde, which will be reported to the emperor soon, is 2.634 billion. The budget for the 35th year of Zhengde is also ready, which is 2.48 billion. Please review it, Your Majesty."

"Okay, let's discuss it."

"Yes."

The two of them liked this kind of atmosphere. Whether the court was in chaos or not, they felt that their time was not wasted while doing these practical things.

(End of this chapter)