Song Dynasty's Ignorant Prince

Farming tools are tools for agricultural production, just like we need clothing and food to survive, it is a necessity for agricultural farming. The farm implements operated by the government were of inferior quality and expensive, and farmers were reluctant to use them, so they were changed to self-made iron farm implements. The enlightened monarchs of successive dynasties all realized the obvious unreasonableness of agricultural implement tax, and also issued reduction and exemption measures. It was pioneered in the previous generation, and the agricultural implements in the early Song Dynasty also had to pay taxes, and the levy was stopped in the future.

Silk and grain producing areas adopt the policies of "harmony buying" and "harmony umbrella".

At first, according to the amount of silk and grain, the Song Dynasty sent a fixed amount of purchases and paid some price, but later all "officials did not give money and took them for nothing". Later, they converted the silk or grain that they took for free into cash and ordered the households to pay.

According to a variety of items, a lot of taxes can be taught. In addition, when paying the land tax, the Northern Song Dynasty court still used the previous generation's "branch shift" and "conversion" to exploit the peasants. The so-called branch transfer means that the government, on the pretext of urgent military needs, forced the farmers in the north to send 10 items of autumn tax grain to the border towns to pay, and all the expenses for human and livestock must be provided by themselves. In areas where there is no assignment, farmers have to pay "Dao Li Fee" per bucket according to the amount of land, that is, the road toll for the transportation of taxes and wealth. The so-called conversion means that the government orders farmers to change the specified materials or cash under the pretext of need. In this process, it is convenient for the government to make every possible profit from it.

In addition to the two taxes, there is also chief money. During the Northern Song Dynasty, when there was a silver cashier transaction with the government, an additional chief money was charged according to a certain percentage. The chief money was originally a kind of handling fee, which was used by tax collectors, and also used to make up for warehouse consumption, and later became an additional tax levied with the field fu.

The tax rate of the chief money varies from place to place, and it continues to increase. The chief money of the Song Dynasty is not limited to the additional collection of Tian Fu, and the chief money is collected for all income and expenditure behaviors with the court.

In the Northern Song Dynasty, the people were divided into nine classes. The third class and above belonged to the large and medium landlords. The fifth class and below were ordinary people.

During the reign of Emperor Renzong, he ordered the third-class households to take one liter of rice to prevent floods and droughts. Later it became fashionable. In Song Zhezong's time, it was changed to pay grain to local warehouses to supplement the state's funds. So it lost the original meaning of righteous warehouse and became a kind of tax.

In addition, in the Song Dynasty, there were silkworm salt money, vinegar interest money, market money and so on. In short, from the Northern Song Dynasty to the Southern Song Dynasty, there were many additional taxes on land tax, some were levied all over the country, some were specifically levied on several counties or one place, sometimes popular, sometimes abolished, and so on.

In addition to the regular taxes and surcharges levied on land, there are corvées against peasants. The main household of the Song Dynasty (the household who owns the land and pays the two taxes to the imperial court) also goes to the imperial court at all levels to serve the errands (also called the official service). The burden of the servants is very heavy, and some powerful landlords have to try to escape, and in the end most of them fall into the middle and lower households.

Once they took on the heavy duty of the government and the yaqian, they often went bankrupt. The other kind of miscellaneous work (also known as "husband service") was almost entirely undertaken by poor peasants.

Under the heavy financial pressure, it was an inevitable choice for the government of Song Dynasty to continuously increase the expropriation of farmers.

Some tax collection originally had good motives, but in the later implementation process, it gradually deteriorated and became the income-generating means of the court, which made the tax collection in the Northern Song Dynasty more and more serious.

The Song Dynasty was a civilized society, a country ruled by literati. It was the literati who concealed many ugly and bad deeds under the surface of the glorious civilization.

Some good policies are mostly on paper and have not been implemented effectively. Many serious tax items also have rational explanations for their existence.

The literati rule of the country has caused many policies that should have been implemented to fall into repeated disputes. There are too many discussions and little work. Many good policies can only be preserved in the beautiful imagination of some people and in the system of various documents. The malpractice for all to see.

In addition, the Song Dynasty had a policy of rewarding and punishing local officials with taxable income for their political performance, rewarding those who received more and punishing those who received less. There was also a saying of "envy" - officials contributed the so-called surplus part of the local government treasury revenue. To the emperor, as a ladder for them to be promoted to officials and nobility.

Zhao Ji has been thinking about these all the time, because there has been a war in the past few years, and there is not much relief if you want to reduce it.

But now, Zhao Ji has cancelled all the other miscellaneous taxes, and only levied two taxes, namely the land tax and the ding tax.

However, the Song Dynasty had a vast territory, and in order to prevent some officials from deceiving them, Zhao Ji began to publish newspapers. Used to record national events and new policies, and to ensure delivery to all states and counties, a few must be posted at the gate of the county government for the common people to see.

Therefore, this policy can be known by the vast majority of ordinary people, that is, it is not easy for officials to cover up or do anything.

The people ran and told each other that their future life would be much better without those extortionate taxes.

But there are many ministers who have questions, Your Majesty, you have exempted so many taxes, does the country still have money?

In fact, up to now, the income structure of Song Dynasty has undergone great changes. The proportion of agricultural tax revenue in the national finance has dropped to less than one-third, and now it is commercial tax and a large amount of materials brought back by the state from abroad.

And even though there are so many extortionate and miscellaneous taxes, not many can actually reach the treasury, and a large part has been exploited and taken away by officials or landlords, the country has a bad reputation, and the real income has not increased much.

Now Zhao Ji simply removes all the excess tax.

Land reform is also continuing, and many people have migrated to the north, to the east, to the Malay Island, to the country of Dashi, so now the class opposition in the Song Dynasty is much smaller. If the people can survive, no one will rebel.

What's more, the rebellion can't win now, because flesh and blood can't stop the guns.

When these extortionate and miscellaneous taxes went away, the people were happy, and some officials were not happy. They lost the name of the officials and could no longer exploit the people.

In addition, regarding corvée, Zhao Ji invited Li Gang and other ministers to discuss it together.

"Li Gang, how do you guys think the problem of corvée should be solved? The common people suffer from this!" Zhao Ji passed the problem to a few people.