At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 386, Difficult Tax Reform and Zhou Bo's Strategy

Now that the big stick has been hit the Han officials, they are naturally unhappy. It is unreasonable to impose taxes on their own people.

Many Han officials even shouted, "I have shed blood for the emperor, I have been wounded for the Han Dynasty, and this is how the court treats us meritorious officials! Not only did they not reduce taxes, but they also increased them. You will not pay even a penny more in taxes."

Another Han official wrote to the emperor, "Since the court has a lot of debts and needs to raise taxes, then we should raise taxes together. It is not right for us meritorious officials to have high taxes while ordinary people have low taxes. There is no such thing in the world."

These people wanted to expand the court's policy, making it difficult to implement. Even if it was really implemented, expanding the scope of taxation would be equivalent to reducing their pressure.

Moreover, the imperial court could not directly collect taxes from ordinary people, as the tax supervisors did not have that many tax collectors. They could only rely on the local Han officials, and as long as they collected taxes, they would have room for maneuver, and they could transfer the pressure of persuasion to ordinary people.

Ordinary people are also afraid. Now the imperial court is cracking down on landlords with 2000 acres of land. Who knows whether it will crack down on farmers with acres of land in a few years?

According to the current 30% tax rate of the Han Dynasty, many farmers have already converted their fields into prime fields, and even many fields with guano and organic fertilizer have an output of four or five dan per mu. The tax will triple, and the dan of grain they handed over will increase to over a hundred dan. Few farmers can accept such a high tax.

After all, the price of guano is so high. They worked hard to increase the grain, but it was all taken away by the court. Then who were they working for?

So they followed the Han officials and opposed the "Han Dynasty's Strict Taxation Decree". The voices of opposition were one after another, and 90% of the memorials reported to the court from the local areas were against the tax increase.

There was even a grassroots Han official who wrote an article that was published in the "Great Han Monthly".

His core idea was very simple. How did the court get into debts of hundreds of billions? First, it fought the Huns and occupied the northern desert. Second, it purchased the territories of the vassal states in Hexi.

But the vast territory of the desert was divided among the princes, and Hexi originally belonged to princes like Ji Bu. The Han Dynasty spent 300 billion in total.

As a result, the captured Mobei was distributed to the princes, and even the cattle and sheep spoils were given to them. Ji Bu and his men could no longer stay in Hexi, but they still wanted the court to back them up. This didn't make sense.

In the end, the imperial court was left with a huge debt. They did not get an acre of land west of the desert. As a result, in order to pay off the debt, they imposed taxes on the Han people. Is this fair and just?

Your Majesty has always been talking about equal rights and responsibilities. These debts were originally caused by those princes, and the desert has become the territory of those princes. It is those princes who should repay the debts.

This article received great response and was supported by the people, scholars, and officials of the Han Dynasty. They all thought that the article was very reasonable and that the debts should be repaid by the princes of the Han Dynasty.

But Xu Fan knew that the princes of the Han Dynasty simply could not afford such a sum of money. To enfeoff the princes in the desert was not only to give them rights, but also a heavy obligation.

Xu Fan understood that the article was wrong in saying that the rights and responsibilities were not right. As long as the desert did not produce new Hu people, its value to the Han Dynasty would far exceed the tens of billions of debts.

But many things cannot be explained by reason, and those who oppose tax reform just want an excuse.

This article became the theoretical basis for their opposition to tax reform, and they used it to gather a large number of people to oppose tax reform.

Without the assistance of local grassroots Han officials, Zhou Bo's tax collectors could not even understand the most basic household registration, let alone collect taxes.

Therefore, although this decree was implemented, even the most basic land and household registrations of the tax objects could not be found. The Han officials of the Han Dynasty always tried various ways to delay. Without the cooperation of local Han officials, even the land registrations of the taxpayers could not be obtained, and naturally the taxes could not be collected.

Even the personal safety of local tax collectors began to be affected. Of course, the prestige of the Han Dynasty was still high at that time, and there were no cases of tax collectors being beaten to death or five tombstones being written.

However, it had become a common occurrence for their offices to be pelted with stones, which resulted in the tax collectors not daring to leave the office for fear of being hit with clubs. It could be said that the implementation of the new tax rate by the Han Dynasty had not progressed at all.

Faced with this situation, on February 2, the "Han Monthly Report" published on the front page the emperor's "Explanations on the Han Dynasty's Strict Enforcement of Tax Laws", explaining to the people of the world the debt pressure that the Han Dynasty was facing at the time. The court debt was as high as one million gold, and the annual interest was 200,000 gold. If the debt was not repaid soon, the interest alone would crush the Han Dynasty.

At the same time, the Han Dynasty explained to the people of the world that the "Strict Tax Law" was not a tax increase, but that these taxes were what the court should have received. It was just that the court had not collected this money in the past in order to recuperate. Now the court is under great financial pressure, and Han officials at all levels should understand the difficulties of the court, play the leading role of Han officials, and take the initiative to be a glorious taxpayer.

For this reason, at the end of Xu Fan's article, he also attached tax payment certificates of various workshops under the Han Dynasty's Neiku. Last year, the emperor Xu Fan paid more than 500 million yuan in taxes, all of which were paid at the 30% rate.

Then the fake Prime Minister Zhang Liang stated the importance of dividing the desert to the Han Dynasty. It could completely solve the border problems that had existed for thousands of years. The savings in military expenditure alone would far exceed the tens of billions of debts.

At the same time, it also elaborated on the contributions of Ji Bu and other princes to the expansion of the Han Dynasty's territory, and the significance of Hexi to Guanzhong. If the imperial court controlled Hexi, Guanzhong would have a gateway and would be able to prevent the harassment of Guanzhong by the Hu people.

Sure enough, after Xu Fan and Zhang Liang's articles were published, the voices of public discussion became much quieter, and the Han officials did not dare to continue submitting memorials of opposition.

Even Xu Fan, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, had to pay three times the transaction tax. They wrote to him again to say that they were more noble than the emperor.

Prime Minister Zhang Liang also explained to you the importance of the desert and Hexi to the Han Dynasty. No one with a bit of political sense would do this.

Of course, Xu Fan’s role as a role model is just to make everyone stop openly opposing this policy.

But robbing people of their money is like killing their parents. Xu Fan does not have such high prestige to make people take the money out of their pockets obediently. The Han officials no longer oppose it openly.

But they still secretly resisted the court's policies. There were many wealthy households with more than 2,000 mu of land, and without the cooperation of Han officials, it was impossible for tax collectors to find tax collectors.

At this time, Prime Minister Zhou Zhang wrote letters directly to the governors of the Han Dynasty, telling them to take the lead and set an example, and let their families, relatives, and clan members take the initiative to report taxes at 30%.

If they cannot set an example, their evaluation will be lowered by one level this year, and even relatives who evade taxes will be demoted. Zhou Zhang told these two thousand stone governors directly that he only had one more year as prime minister. Tax rate reform was his last policy as prime minister. He did not want his successor to be burdened with millions of gold in debt. Anyone who dared to stand in his way and made him retire should not blame him as prime minister for not remembering the old friendship.

Of course, in addition to giving the Han Dynasty's prefects a big stick, he also gave them a sweet treat. If the county governor did a good job in the tax rate reform, he would report him to the emperor as his successor.

This sweet date really attracted the hearts of these Han Dynasty governors. The prime minister and the emperor were friends who shared weal and woe. The emperor's trust in the prime minister was rare among monarchs since the Warring States Period. With the prime minister's recommendation, their chances of becoming the Three Dukes were extremely high.

After receiving this sweet reward, local governors no longer opposed the reform of the law, and many county governors even took the initiative to report the land registration status of their families.

But even with the support of these governors, the tax reform progress was still slow. There were more than 50 governors in the Han Dynasty. The only ones who were truly qualified to compete for the position of the Three Dukes were the Nine Ministers and the top few governors. Ordinary governors basically had no chance. They simply did not take Zhou Zhang's sweet date.

They are the group of people who are neither up nor down. For them, it is almost impossible to make further progress. They also know that they lack talent and only climbed to their current position by chance. They are also very satisfied with their current position and don't want to continue to struggle.

The family's wealth became their pursuit, and it was naturally impossible for them to take the initiative to hand over their money to the court.

The local Han officials had even less influence; changes in the imperial court had basically no effect on them, but the increased taxes actually took money out of their pockets.

Since overt means didn't work, they began to use covert means. They began to spread the word in the countryside that after the court increased taxes, the taxes would be added to goods, and the prices of goods would definitely increase.

At the same time, they raised the prices of flour, rice, corn and other food grains in their own stores. The price increase of these basic food grains soon led to an increase in the prices of other commodities.

In addition, these people fanned the flames and fabricated all kinds of rumors, so in April when the tax reform was announced, in a short period of time, many places saw price fluctuations and panic buying of goods.

Many people were afraid of rising prices, so they rushed to buy rice, flour, salt, cloth, and various daily necessities, but their actions accelerated the rise in commodity prices. (Sometimes group consciousness really makes people speechless. I experienced a rush for vinegar and two rushes for salt. Fukushima has made a huge contribution to salt.)
The increase in living costs led to complaints from the lower-class people and aroused their dissatisfaction with the court.

Xu Fan was even a little happy to see the soaring prices. The Han Dynasty's major warehouses had more than 3 million dan of grain, and he could just sell some of the old grain to clear out some of the granaries.

He ordered the government warehouses to start distributing grain to stabilize prices. On the other hand, he ordered the monthly reports of various households in the Han Dynasty to inform the people that the tax reform would not affect the prices of goods, so that the people would not blindly follow suit and suffer losses.

Xu Fan was not under much pressure, but Zhou Bo was under great pressure at this time. He had long thought that this tax reform would be very difficult, but he did not expect it to be so difficult.

He is now surrounded by enemies, including not only the local county magistrates and Han officials, but also the nine ministers in the imperial court.

This year, the hot topic in the first half of the year was tax reform. From local areas to Guanzhong, from the grassroots to the officialdom, and then to the literati, various monthly reports were busy discussing the issue of tax reform, and their opinions were also different.

Zhou Bo has always been at the center of this hot spot, which makes many officials who have ideas about the positions of the Three Dukes regard Zhou Bo as their biggest enemy.

It is easy to imagine that a successful tax reform would be a great achievement, and if Zhou Bo succeeded at this time of change of power, the emperor might be so pleased that he would make Zhou Bo the second prime minister of the Han Dynasty.

So Zhou Bo became the first to stand out and the target of attack by all those who had ambitions for the position of prime minister. They ordered their subordinates in the local area to hinder Zhou Bo and prevent him from completing the tax reform.

It took him more than three months to complete the statistics of land ownership of small and medium-sized landlords in Guanzhong, the area with the highest level of government control and Sanchuan County where he had originally lived.

The progress in other places is still slow. It is obvious that the tax reform task cannot be completed during the summer harvest. The key is that there are only five months left for the autumn harvest. At this rate, the tax reform will definitely not be completed this year.

Zhou Bo could only find Xu Fan and apologize to him.

Xu Fan smiled and said, "The most difficult things to do these days are always to stuff knowledge into people's heads and take money out of other people's pockets. Don't be in a hurry when it comes to tax reform, which involves money. Take it slow and steady, and you will be less likely to make mistakes."

"It's difficult to popularize it all over the Han Dynasty at once. We should concentrate our strength to fight a tough battle. You can concentrate the tax collectors in two or three counties, and do the statistics and investigations little by little. There will always be a day of success."

For Xu Fan, the tax reform has already had a good start. What remains is to take the time to promote it bit by bit. In the absence of external enemies, the Han court has the time and does not need to be too impatient for quick success.

But Zhou Bo was unwilling to spend more than ten years to complete the tax reform. He would have to serve as the tax supervisor for another ten years, which was not what Zhou Bo wanted. He wanted to go further, but he didn't have ten years to waste.

Zhou Bo thought for a moment and gritted his teeth and said, "Your Majesty, I have another plan that can reduce the resistance of local Han officials to tax reform."

Xu Fan asked: "What strategy?"

Zhou Bo said: "I would like to first implement a system of public disclosure of officials' assets in the tax bureau. To correct others, one must correct oneself first. I will first clean up the corrupt elements in the tax bureau.

I also ask the court officials to cooperate with me to launch a campaign to clean up corrupt elements throughout the Han Dynasty, arrest a number of corrupt officials in the Han Dynasty, and use their property to repay the debts owed by the court."

"The court gave the choice to those local Han officials, and they continued to prevent the court from pushing forward tax reform.

The court will use anti-corruption actions to allow their property to cover the court's debts. If you don't want your property to be confiscated, don't hinder the court's tax reform. "

Xu Fan looked at Zhou Bo in astonishment. This was an opinion that required extraordinary courage to raise. It would definitely offend all the Han officials.

Especially since he was targeting his own subordinates, Zhou Bo was going to be a lone minister. In the future, his enemies would observe his actions under a magnifying glass. As long as he made any mistake, he would definitely be retaliated against.

(End of this chapter)