Late Tang

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In a blink of an eye, it has entered midsummer, and the summer harvest is in full swing.Schools all over the country have a busy farming holiday, and even the government offices in prefectures and counties, as well as the local united army and township army, have also disbanded and returned home for busy farming.

Li Jing also returned to Dengzhou from Liaodong, and led a group of officials to inspect the summer harvest in various counties and counties.After the wheat harvest and Champa rice are harvested, they have to rush to the drying yard to thresh the grain.The town [***] has set up grain management offices and granaries in all states and counties, and each grain management office has begun to send more people to buy grain.The people in the town [***] basically have their own fields, but the town [***] is also facing a new problem, that is, the problem of taxation.

Except for a few towns in the southeast, the local feudal towns in the Tang Dynasty at this time hardly had to pay taxes to the imperial court, and the tax revenue was reserved for the feudal towns to raise soldiers.The town [***] had not paid taxes to the imperial court before, and Li Jing was not short of this money. In order to attract more people to come, Li Jing implemented a certain period of time for the newly divided fields and newly reclaimed fields. tax-exempt provisions.Only the original landowners are taxed according to the two-tax law.

However, although these two tax laws are new tax laws that were reformed less than a hundred years ago, Li Jing feels that this tax law is not very good. At least, for Li Jing who already owns ten states, this tax system is not suitable enough.

However, the tax system is fundamental, not only related to the tax revenue of the town [***], but also to every family in the town [***].

After almost two years of preparation, Li Jing is ready to officially put this tax reform on the agenda.

In the city of Dengzhou, the governors of the ten states, the magistrates of 55 counties under their jurisdiction, and the Sihu Jianjun from each state came here together.

"At the beginning of this dynasty, the land equalization system was implemented, which guaranteed to a certain extent that each farmer had a piece of land. With these lands, they could bear the imperial court's rent, taxes and fees, and maintain a family's collection. , Modulation is carried out on this basis."

Li Rang, as the Sihu of Andong Dadu Protectorate, participated in the military, and was also the actual steward of the money and valley under Li Jing, spoke first.He was not very supportive of Li Jing's tax reform.After all, the tax system involves too much, and it affects the whole body.Right now the town [***] is not very stable, if the reform is not good, it will easily lead to turmoil, which he does not want to see.In particular, he felt that the two-tax law proposed by Yang Yan during Emperor Dezong's reign was much better than the earlier rent, mediocrity, and regulation.

After Tang Jianzhong, land annexation gradually developed, and the number of farmers who lost their land and fled increased.When peasants fled, the government often ordered the neighbors to pay the rent adjustment. As a result, more farmers were forced to flee, and the maintenance of the rent adjustment was already very difficult.

At the same time, the land tax levied according to the cultivated area and the household tax levied according to the level of rich and poor gradually became more important. The proportion of rent and transfer has been roughly equal.

After the Anshi Rebellion, the state lost the ability to effectively control household registration and farmland registration accounts, and land annexation became more intense. In addition to the urgent need for military expenditures, the feudal towns in various places could use various names to apportion without the approval of the central government. Therefore, there were many miscellaneous taxes, and the central government could not check them. The envoys, the envoys cannot check the states, and the tax system is very chaotic.

In the first year of Emperor Dezong's Jianzhong period, Prime Minister Yang Yan proposed the implementation of the two-tax law, which essentially replaced the new tax system of rent adjustment with household tax and land tax.The main principle of the two tax laws is that "households have no owners and guests, and the living is the book; there is no middle class, and the rich and the poor are the difference."That is to say, no distinction is made between native households (local households) and customers (foreign households). As long as there are assets and land in the local area, they are considered locals and registered for taxation.

"The main feature of the Two Taxes Law is to cancel the rent adjustment and various miscellaneous taxes, and to retain the household tax and land tax. At the same time, the income is measured. The court first uses the amount of various taxes in a certain year as the total amount of taxes to be collected later. Then it is apportioned to the states according to this amount, and the states are apportioned to various places.

Household tax is levied according to the level of households (shared according to nine levels), with high households paying more and low households paying less.The division of households, etc., is based on the amount of property.When the household tax is collected, most of the money has to be converted into silk, and the collected money is only a small part.

The land tax is levied on grain by mu.The taxable land shall be based on the number of fields cultivated in the 14th year of the Dali calendar.

In addition, regardless of household tax and land tax, they are collected in summer and autumn, and one-thirtieth of the tax is levied on merchants who do not settle down. "

Li Jing is very satisfied with Li Rang's summary, and he has been studying Yang Yan's two tax laws. Speaking of which, these two tax laws have worked well for the Tang Dynasty, which had an early collapse of the land equalization system.The two tax laws do not distinguish between main households and customers, and they are all included in the household registration of the current state and county where they live, and they pay taxes on the spot.It can prevent some bureaucrats and wealthy people from buying properties in other states and counties in order to avoid rent and mediocrity.At the same time, rent adjustments and miscellaneous taxes will be cancelled.And it is stipulated to pay taxes in summer and autumn.The summer tax shall not pass through June, and the autumn tax shall not pass past November.Money is paid by household, and corn is paid by mu of field.

The positive impact of the Two Tax Laws cannot be ignored. The "Tax Land" of the Two Tax Laws has loosened the government's personal control over farmers; it also stipulates that nobles, bureaucrats, and businessmen must pay taxes, which expands tax sources and increases government revenue. fiscal revenue; the two-tax law pays taxes on land assets, which to a certain extent alleviated the burden of poor peasants without land and changed the phenomenon of uneven burdens between the rich and the poor.

"What Li Sihu said is good, but there are many drawbacks in the two tax laws." Li Jing knocked on the table and said slowly, "Because the households have not been adjusted for a long time, the principle of dividing the burden between the rich and the poor cannot be implemented. The tax amount of the household tax part of the tax is calculated in money. The government only collects money but not goods, and Datang has a shortage of money, and the circulation of coins in the market is insufficient, which leads to the phenomenon that money is more important than goods. At that time, prices fell even more, and the people had to sell silk, grain and other products cheaply to pay taxes, which greatly increased the burden.

Moreover, under the two-tax system, land was bought and sold legally, and land mergers became more prevalent. The rich forced the poor to sell their land without paying taxes.Land concentration has reached an unprecedented level, and more farmers have been reduced to tenants and farmers.In particular, the local government implements the joint guarantee system. The tax amount of each village is determined in advance. If one of the ten households goes bankrupt and flees, the remaining nine households still have to pay the tax of ten households. Fleeing, the burden on the remaining people will be heavier. If more people flee, then the heavy tax will directly crush the remaining people and force them to flee. "

In Li Jing's view, living within one's means is not a good tax system.And no matter when, land annexation is an extremely dangerous thing.Li Jing believes that the new tax system must at least have some preparations in this regard.

All the officials looked at Li Jing, wondering how his family, the first county king with a different surname since the three dynasties, would put forward his own new ideas on the tax system after winning everything on the battlefield.

All the people present were civilians. Although there were many senior generals and many famous scribes with the titles of consultants, consultants, and professors, they were all just present and could not directly participate in the discussion.But obviously, no one present today believed that Li Jing could come up with a better tax system to replace the two-tax law.

"I have been thinking about a more reasonable tax system, which is reasonable for more people, and a new tax law that allows the government to collect taxes. Before the two tax laws, most nobles and bureaucrats did not pay taxes. The new After the tax law, nobles, bureaucrats, and businessmen all have to pay taxes, which expands the source of taxation and increases the collection and release of the government. The two tax laws use land resources to pay taxes, which reduces the burden on poor peasants without land, and changes the uneven burden of the rich and the poor. Phenomenon, which is a wonderful thing, but it’s not enough.”

Li Jing paused, sorting out the thoughts in his mind, thinking about the new tax law reform for a long time.

"I have an idea. First of all, the new law will focus on the amount of land tax, and I plan to abolish the poll tax!"

One stone stirred up a thousand layers of waves, and Li Jing's words shocked all the officials present.Poll tax, also known as Ding tax.This is a tax that has been collected almost since before the Qin Dynasty, and it is very important.

After the Qin Dynasty, the taxation was all in the name of head tax.The poll tax is the most efficient, but the most unfair.From the theoretical analysis of welfare economics, the collection of poll tax can only widen the gap between rich and poor.In later generations, due to the unfairness of the poll tax, modern countries almost no longer collect it.Li Jing's idea is to first cancel this tax that is obviously unfair to the rich and the poor.

In the Qing Dynasty, the new tax law of dividing the land into the mu finally abolished the collection of head tax.

Most of Li Jing's current territories in the ten states are newly established territories, and a large number of them immigrated from the Central Plains.These newly immigrated people were thus allocated a piece of land, which was very similar to the land equalization system in the early Tang Dynasty.For the imperial court, more self-cultivating farmers are definitely better than a large number of land mergers in the hands of a small number of big landlords.In such an era, the farming era, the land is the most important.

After a large number of land mergers, it will inevitably lead to a large number of landless people who will become hermit tenant farmers of the big landlords. The loss of a large number of people will inevitably lead to uneven labor.The fleeing of the population and the uneven service will cause a series of chain reactions, endangering the rule of the court.

Historically, after the Qing Dynasty's sharing of land into mu, it had a great easing effect on land mergers.

The principle of distributing tenements into mu is "those who assign more tenures will have more fields, and those who have few tenures will also have lands." However, landlords have more fields and less land, and farmers have less land and more land, so "rich households are also poor In service, it is also difficult to buy property."

In fact, it is a great reform. The two tax laws have been used for more than 800 years in history. Later, the Ming Dynasty experienced an important reform of the whip method. Finally, in the Qing Dynasty, it was reformed again on the whip method. It has become a piece of land.Now that Li Jing is throwing out the tax system more than a thousand years later, all the officials in the hall are at a loss and are at a loss. (To be continued.)