Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1803 Industrial and Commercial Taxes

There was even a problem that the tax collected could not cover the cost of tax collection, so that some places simply canceled the collection of commercial tax and made up for it with floating income from land tax.Although the commercial tax in Guangzhou has not been abolished, it is still half dead.Instead, local commercial taxes.

After the Japanese pirates were pacified, the two chief ministers of Fujian and Vietnam set up a tax bureau independent of the original commercial tax system of the Ministry of Households, and set up tax cards at bridgeheads and ferries. The money can't help but be handed over to the Ministry of Accounts, so the local yamen are more keen to collect it.However, even if he is keen on expropriation, the amount of expropriation is insignificant in Ai Zhixin's view, and cannot be compared with the status of a prosperous commercial city like Guangzhou.Especially when he saw a town under the Guangzhou government with a mere 170 taels of commercial tax revenue, he knew that there was a lot of tricks in it.Because the "reasonable burden" that the town pays to the Senate every year is 450 taels of silver.

However, Ai Zhixin does not intend to use this as a breakthrough to increase taxes.Commercial tax is actually lijin. Although it is convenient to collect and the tax amount is not small, it affects the circulation of goods.He set his sights on the doorman's tax, the real estate deed tax, and the wine and vinegar tax.

Gate stall tax is a commercial tax collected by the local government from permanent shops in towns and cities. Because the ancient society did not have a perfect accounting system, the government taxation did not count the shop cost and profit of the shop. It was basically a quota. Tax.As for setting high or low, it depends entirely on luck.Some industries are extremely profitable - such as pawn shops, but only pay a tax of 45 taels a year, and small shops on the street have to pay taxes of a few taels of silver a year.

The gate tax in Guangzhou is collected by the guilds of various industries. For shops that have not established guilds, the dental merchants designated by the government will pay for it on their behalf.

Ai Zhixin took a look at the total tax income of door stalls in one prefecture and two counties in Guangzhou, and he can get more than 1 taels a year-this figure is quite good, but it is still far from his psychological expectation.

The real estate deed tax is levied at 3% of the sale price or pawn price.However, this tax has not been levied in many places for many years, and the states and counties under the jurisdiction of Qiongzhou Prefecture do not even have collection records.Ai Zhixin discovered that the Guangzhou government has not only been collecting taxes, but also has a very high income from deed taxes. In Nanhai and Panyu counties alone, the annual income from deed taxes is as much as 2000 taels.This is probably due to the prosperity of business in big cities, higher real estate prices and more frequent transactions.

As for the tax on wine and vinegar, it was a tax in the Ming Dynasty that continued in the Song Dynasty, and the monopoly of wine and vinegar was a major income of the government in the Song Dynasty.However, the level of management of industry and commerce in the Ming Dynasty was extremely low, and it could not effectively control the production and circulation of wine and vinegar, so this tax was basically useless.

"Daming's tax burden is not too heavy, but too light." Ai Zhixin said at the new district financial work conference in Wudaokou, "The potential is far from being tapped, so what is the Ming's GDP? When it comes to the efficiency of financial exploitation, Daming is already a standard backward country, not to mention compared with European countries, even Japan is inferior in East Asia.”

In Ai Zhixin's view, the tax collection efficiency of the Ming government is generally too low. The loss in the collection process is huge, and the leakage, risk, and leakage are serious.It is said that a large number of free "zao slaves" are used to handle affairs, but the actual hidden personnel costs are astonishingly high.

It is not easy to build your own taxation team, especially this taxation team has to roughly guarantee “cleanness” while maintaining efficiency—even in the 21st century, there are system guarantees, countless rules and internal control inspection methods. In modern tax authorities, there are still people from poor backgrounds who drive BMWs and live in villas.

It is basically impossible to form a team that Ai Zhixin can see through with the current education and administrative system of the Senate.Furthermore, there are many problems with direct tax collection: first, it consumes manpower. Before the agricultural tax was abolished in the past, the administrative personnel costs consumed by the collection of agricultural tax often offset the tax collection; second, it is easy to intensify social conflicts, because the conflicts caused by tax Even riots, there are many examples in ancient and modern China and abroad.Finally, modern taxation is based on the modern financial system, while the commercial households in Daming still use the four-pillar settlement method, and smaller shops even simply have a running account.

To implement the new tax law, it is necessary to change the accounting system, to get businessmen used to cash not staying overnight, and to force them to use bank notes instead of cash directly... This is not something that will happen overnight.But tax collection is imminent.

If there is a simple way, it is that they have practiced "reasonable burden" in the past.That is to say, the Senate proposed the total amount of "burden", and then the taxpayers held a meeting to deliberate, and each self-reported the share.This method of collection has the least resistance. Now that Guangzhou has established a federation of industry and commerce, it is easy to take this method to bear fruit.But Ai Zhixin thinks that this is a cheap solution they took when they lacked a political organization in the past.

If such an approach is adopted, then the various tax rates formulated by the tax agency will be meaningless, because either the amount of tax collected is lower than the tax rate, which directly gives up the benefits to industrial and commercial households; or the tax rate is higher, then the tax becomes " apportionment".increase the burden on taxpayers.

The biggest problem is: Once such an approach is adopted, it will inevitably go through the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and various industry associations, which means that these institutions will be able to control taxation power, which will easily lead to unfair tax distribution and legal tax evasion.

Ai Zhixin believes that although shops in Guangzhou do not have a modern accounting system, most shops use the four-pillar liquidation method, and their business conditions can be verified by books.Moreover, in the Ming Dynasty, regardless of whether it was official or private, accounting was basically based on this set of accounting methods. There were many people who knew it, and many ready-made "Mr. Accountants" could be found for temporary use.

Taking advantage of these characteristics, he decided to adopt the model of "self-declaration and actual payment, light tax and heavy punishment" to collect taxes. The industrial and commercial households should declare their own taxes, and the tax department randomly checks the operating income and profit of each store on a regular basis...

Ai Zhixin was flipping through the materials when several soldiers came in carrying dozens of hard-covered books.A clerk reported: "Chief, this is the "Compilation of Guangzhou Industrial and Commercial Household Information" that Chief Lin asked me to hand over to you—please sign for it."

These brochures were compiled by the municipal government based on the list reported by the Federation of Industry and Commerce and the materials collected by the Ministry of Urban and Urban-Rural Development - it lists all the "permanent stores with fixed storefronts", ranging from large merchants like this one to those in the streets and alleys. Grocery stores...everything.It lists the store's address, business scope, business status, shopkeeper's name and employment situation in quite detail.In addition to the previous data accumulated by the Ministry of Urban and Industry, the collection of these materials relies on a series of administrative work since entering the city: household registration checks, house registration, business registration... If there is no such early work, Ai Zhixin can only rely on the Chamber of Commerce and Industry In addition to apportioning "reasonable burdens", there may not be any new tricks to play.

Ai Zhixin has already made a basic plan in his purse. Generally speaking, he plans to levy property tax, circulation tax and stamp duty in three categories.

The first column is property tax, which is levied on agricultural land property, commercial land property, huge house property, and related property such as merchant ships, industrial and mining.In terms of taxes, he plans to collect: real estate tax, urban land use tax, vehicle and vessel license tax, vehicle and vessel purchase tax, deed tax, inheritance tax and slave tax.

The second is the circulation tax, which is used to maintain the order of the commodity market.Business tax is not divided into specific details. Generally speaking, as long as business activities occur, all business income obtained is included in the scope of taxation-naturally, there is a certain amount and scope of exemption.The most important of these is the collection from the circulation link of the newly established wholesale market in Guangzhou.

The third is stamp duty, land deed replacement, and contract transactions require the legal recognition and protection of the Senate.The objects of taxation, the trade of sailing licenses for ships, land deed certificates, house deed certificates, business licenses, stock certificates, and various certificates all require the maintenance of the authority of the Senate.

The last is the local administrative surtax, which is levied on the circulation tax link.After discussing with Liu Xiang, Ai Zhixin and Liu Xiang decided to levy four items: city cleaning fee, local public security fee, urban construction fee and education fee.These four taxes are used by the Guangzhou local government.The rest of the taxes are all national taxes, and some of them will be refunded according to the actual situation after collection.

Customs duties, mooring taxes, and tonnage taxes, because he is not responsible for this, he has no plans for the time being. As for the salt and tobacco monopoly, he has no special ideas for the time being, because according to the monopoly practice of the old time and space, it is necessary to With a whole team, he can't even improve the taxation authority now, so of course he can't talk about engaging in a monopoly system.Therefore, the method used in Lingao is still adopted: one-off tax payment at the source of wholesale, and then the practice of distribution by distributors.As for the monopoly of tobacco leaves and saltworks, this matter is more complicated, and the resources that need to be used are not at his disposal as the chief of the Finance and Taxation Bureau.

Ai Zhixin read about a few pages of the brochure, and basically had a bottom line in his mind.At this time, the city government sent a correspondent: Mayor Liu invited him to a meeting.

"What meeting?" Ai Zhixin had just entered the city, and he had a lot of things to do. He was about to have a meeting before his butt was hot. If it had nothing to do with finance and taxation work, he would be grateful.

"It's a meeting about custom industry tidying up."

"Tell Mayor Liu that I have too many things at hand, so I won't be here..." Ai Zhixin frowned.I thought to myself that this Liu Xiang is also an official, and he has to show his style, and he has to take the lead in a meeting.

"Mayor Liu said that this meeting is related to you." Liu Xiang probably knew that he was not planning to go, so he specially informed the correspondent, "The customs tax issue in Guangzhou will be discussed at the rectification meeting..."

Ai Zhixin immediately changed his mind: "I'll go right away."

(End of this chapter)