"Today's court discussion will determine whether the military system of the government will be accepted by His Majesty. It depends on whether Mr. Zhuge can come up with any compromise improvement plan. The best of both worlds is to not over-exploit the people, but also reduce the cost of the imperial court's mobilization of military service and corvee."

"It is definitely impossible to completely block Your Majesty's determination to reform and not change anything. Now it is a time of great dispute, Yuan Shao is paralyzed, and the strategies of the Kanto puppet dynasty's light government and lenient government must be tightened.

People like Cao Cao who hurt the people and abused the people have the right to suggest ways to recruit soldiers, grain and money from the Kanto puppet dynasty. It is certain that he has become more aggressive. It is impossible for His Majesty to not upgrade our skills."

On November 21, the third court meeting that Li Su participated in after returning to Chang'an was early in the morning, all the officials waiting for the court had basically this mentality in their hearts.

They have been tortured by repeated pulling and external pressure offensives, and they just want to have a good time. They are basically willing to agree to any conditions.

The mutual use of Cao Cao and Liu Bei can be seen.

The scholars and officials in the world suddenly realized that Yuan Shao's option to "prefer the scholars and officials" almost no longer existed overnight. The courts in Guandong and Guanxi began to increase their efforts to mobilize civil forces.

All the aristocratic families missed the days when Yuan Shao was not paralyzed.

Not to mention other aspects, Yuan Shao’s identity as the representative of the interest group of aristocratic families is really stable.

...

The final moment of judgment has finally arrived.

After the Korean discussion began, the previous topics were discussed quickly, and there was no ambiguity between the parties.

Soon, Liu Bei asked Zhuge Liang and wanted to know if Zhuge Liang had any new step-by-step improvement plans for the proposal of the military system after five days of running-in and rectifying.

Zhuge Liang also came up with a plan to slightly restrain the mobilization efforts, but he did not change the soup.

The relevant court officials who had suffered losses closed their eyes and waited for Liu Bei to give him some fun.

However, just when everyone accepted their fate, Liu Ba, the Minister of Finance, who was extremely hated by them for a few years and had always played the role of offending people, played the role of savior to save everyone.

"Your Majesty! I still feel that the military system of the government is too abused by the people. I have asked Li Sikong and Zhong Situ in the past five days. I have discussed a new way to increase income and open source for the court.

Perhaps it is possible to solve the problem of expanding new troops and building canals without opening the system. The people do not increase taxes and the country uses their feet, so your Majesty can investigate it."

As soon as Liu Ba said this, everyone was happy first, and then they skipped a beat.

After all, in recent times, Liu Ba has changed his image of "reform pioneers offend people" in previous years and has become a counter-reform pioneer who "helps everyone concentrate on feedback on those anti-Zhuge Liang's military source system reform."

Everyone has already developed trust in Liu Ba in subconsciously.

At this moment, no one would think that Liu Ba had colluded with Li Su and Zhuge Liang for a long time, but he would think that he was "ineffective in fighting, had to endure humiliation and compromise, and wanted to take a step back."

However, the eight words "the people do not increase taxes but the country uses its best" are still very alert.

Because this sentence has appeared twice in Chinese history - of course, for people in the late Han Dynasty, they only knew that the previous time and the next time had not happened yet.

The first one to say this in history was Sang Hongyang during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, which had happened this time. The second one was Wang Anshi during the reign of Emperor Shenzong of Song, which does not exist yet.

Whenever these eight words appear, it is equivalent to taking the commercial tax into action, and every word is accurate.

It is even more accurate than the later generations of "Don't say it's not to be prepared or start a war".

The people do not increase taxes, but taxes are land taxes, and agricultural taxes are not added.

What else can I add without adding agricultural tax? It must be the industrial and commercial tax. I can’t add the capita tax without restraint.

Moreover, Sang Hongyang also added commercial taxes that time, which led to the imperial court's salt and iron monopoly monopoly system.

"Is Liu Ba's tax rate to increase the commercial tax rate? Or is it to expand the scope of the imperial court's monopoly business industry?" Everyone's first reaction was like this.

"However, if the strength is not very strong and can stop the reform of the government military system, it will be accepted by expanding the monopoly and increasing the commercial tax." Everyone has been tortured enough.

Everyone was nervous, and Liu Ba finally thought of this set of nominal ones. In fact, Li Su's ideas were more than him, and the new industrial and commercial tax law was revealed.

"Your Majesty, I will ask Li Sikong and Zhong Situ's draft formed this time. The general idea is as follows:

First, since Emperor Wu, the bad rule of "collecting business and travel tariffs" that have been in fact implemented for nearly three hundred years has been implemented, and the tariffs have been reduced to only ports, canals, new roads for official construction, borders and borders with the occupied areas have been collected. However, the original cross-state and cross-county tariffs are exempted.

Second, expand the existing scope of the question, but relax the question methods. For the question industry, the court will only allow officials to directly appoint officials to supervise direct sales, and will allow officials to supervise commercial offices and contract subscriptions.

Third, the contract tax collection method for special products is changed from the transaction link to the production link. If the production capacity of private related industries and workshops is found, if there is no disaster or the reasons for unsalable production, production tax will be collected based on the theoretical output.

Finally, tariffs are still imposed on barbarians outside the Han territory, those who enter the country to buy overseas goods for sale in the Han territory.

In this way, the new law can ensure that the old circulation tax burden does not increase, and the collection places will be clarified and reduced, but the total industrial and commercial income of the court has increased, so only Your Majesty will observe..."

It is difficult to understand Liu Ba’s words without translating them and adding a little before and after.

But roughly speaking, this law does not explicitly increase commercial tax and grab money, but "increase and decrease", and it does not seem that uncomfortable.

In the old Han Dynasty, the transaction process and transportation of county boundaries, a 2% tax is charged each time. If there are many prefectures and counties passing through during transportation, it is very common for two or three percent of the original purchase value to be paid.

In addition, the 2% of the municipal tax in the transaction process is not based on the actual transaction volume, but is paid at 2% of the "theoretical turnover" evaluated by an industry, which is similar to the fixed business tax in later generations. When the actual turnover of the store is lower than the theoretical amount and the business is too bad, it still needs to be paid according to the theoretical amount. Therefore, in fact, this part of the tax can often reach 5%.

Apart from these two items, there were no other types of industrial and commercial taxes before the Han Dynasty.

There are specialty sales of salt and iron, but that is directly monopolized by the government. You private merchants have no need to sell it at all, so there is no problem of contract fees or tax payments.

In this regard, Sang Hongyang and Wang Anshi are still different. Wang Anshi insists on the official business of salt, iron, tea and wine, but in fact he also knows that the "state-owned enterprises" of the government are inefficient in doing business, so he just put the monopoly rights at a price to contract to private merchants.

In the Han Dynasty, even after the Sang Hongyang reform, the official business of salt and iron was "real. Official business". Only "state-owned enterprises" or royalty and authorized nobles were in operation, and the income was directly and in full, just like the profit balance of state-owned enterprises in later generations.

Li Su felt that the government monopoly and the sale of the private sector was worth learning from. It was like selling cigarettes in later generations that had to spend money to get a monopoly license, which was not as efficient as selling cigarettes directly by the state. Therefore, this point should be added to the new law.

Therefore, the reform of the new law reduced the previous transit tax and reduced the monopoly right to be sold like the Song Dynasty. Then the third aspect was to impose production taxes on the industrial production links of some products.

These three reform steps, one is to reduce taxes and two increases taxes, which is considered to be a sweet date with two sticks.

The court officials didn't understand the twists and turns in it very much, so naturally someone discussed it with Liu Ba. Not all of these people were malicious, and some were just purely worried about the country and the people and felt that it was necessary to ask for advice.

Sun Gan, the Minister of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, first asked: "Shangshu Liu, I have a question. You said that the new law has been abolished in the county border tariffs. Is that the land military checkpoint currently set up? Don't pay taxes when business travel is passed?

In this way, how can the financial sectors that rely on the maintenance of customs tax on customs tax? Will there be other plundering and abuse of the people? The "canals, ports, and important roads built by the imperial court" you mentioned still have to collect tariffs. What are the similarities and differences between the aforementioned commercial tax on customs tax? Can the road guards maintain the road before the inspection can continue to collect taxes?"

Liu Ba had obviously discussed and memorized the terms and explanations with Li Su in advance, and the answer was fluent: "Sun Shangshu asked well, the road tax on canal ports mentioned in the new law should be divided into two types.

One is port tax, which must be collected. In the future, port tax is equivalent to the transportation tax of merchandise after the production of goods and when selling them across counties, as long as the waterway is connected, you can only be drained once and once ashore, two percent each time, and four percent of the total transportation tax.

This is also a measure by the imperial court to encourage the people to develop shipping and sailing. In the past, even if it was a waterway, on the Yangtze River, merchant ships would be stopped once when passing through a county and pay transit tariffs for this county. Now there is no such thing. Once you get on the boat or get off the boat, you will not charge any money as long as you don’t dock.

In this way, merchants can get farther and do not have to worry about getting farther away from the road. They can lose money by shipping locally or they cannot sell at high prices.

As long as the merchant calculates the 4% entry and exit tax in his mind, and then calculates his freight loss clearly and feels profitable, he can do long-distance business with confidence. In this way, all industries can prosper, and merchants dare to sell specialties in a place for thousands of miles to expand the exchange of specialties between the north, west and west of the world."

The clause that Li Subang Liu Ba thought of is indeed long-term benefits for the future development of the commercial society. Although there is less transportation tax at present, merchants' enthusiasm for traveling far and long-distance trade has also been opened up.

In the early Han Dynasty, except for necessary strategic materials or very competitive unique products (such as Shu Jin), other goods were rarely sold from the southernmost to the northernmost. To put it bluntly, merchants felt that it was unpaid and the probability of losing money was too high.

Li Su's new law encourages everyone to stay away from the official infrastructure. Anyway, as long as they don't go through the official infrastructure, there will be so many transportation taxes when they go far and near, they may be able to discover more domestic demand.

Other Han rulers may not have imagined such a thing, but Li Su definitely wanted it.

For example, in later generations, "Sichuan and salt exchanges with Chu", it was impossible in a dynasty where "the farther the transportation is, the more county/province passes, the more transportation tax is collected."

Even if the well salt in Shu has expanded its production and is of good quality and can be sold at high prices, the salt chambers in Shu are worried that "the taxes on our past are too high, and Sichuan salt is not as good as Huai salt to help Chu", and then they don't try it from the beginning. So how do you know if you can finally grab the market with high quality and high prices?

In fact, history has long proved that high-quality Sichuan salt and Chu are a win-win situation. Sichuan salt did not completely occupy the Chu market, but only took advantage of the quality advantage of well salt over sea salt to occupy the high-end market.

Let the rich spend more money on good salt, and the poor continue to spend less money on poor salt. But at least this additional "high-end market" has been tried out by this attempt, and the country has taken the opportunity to collect more taxes and let the rich spend more money, so as to try to alleviate the gap between the rich and the poor.

If the transportation tax calculated by distance is not eliminated, this attempt will not occur from the beginning.

Li Su hopes that in the future, he will only consider the physical cost of transportation when doing long-distance business and not think about the additional tax cost of transportation, so that he can fully compete and discover potential demand.

As a modern person, he always encourages rich people to spend money instead of relying on profits and profits. This will be beneficial to the country, the poor, and the rich themselves.

On this aspect, Li Su was quite disgusted with the Han Dynasty's usual bad habit of "restricting businessmen to high consumption". After this industrial and commercial tax reform, we must also solve this problem - letting rich people spend money, which is a good thing that is beneficial to the country! Not to mention solving the Matthew effect, at least to alleviate the Matthew effect.

...

After Liu Ba roughly explained the commercial tax reform ideas in the transportation process. Sun Qian's second half of the question, namely "How to calculate the specific calculation of tariffs and road canal taxes", Liu Ba continued to answer them.

The latter is relatively simple and clear. Liu Ba clearly pointed out: If the local pass guards repaired the road at will and then made a clever name to buy the road money, it would be investigated and punished under the new industrial and commercial tax law, which would be illegal.

The new road canal tax must be approved by the imperial court and allowed to be built. Only after completion can the toll be charged for "recovering investment costs, principal and interest" as the purpose of "recovering investment costs, principal and interest".

In other words, this is similar to the "highway toll" in later generations, but now it is mainly canals. Especially when Li Su was managing the local area, he carried out so many canal water conservancy projects, which were approved by the court, and he could charge tolls until he recovered the money.

If the project was not registered by the court, the local government would buy money for a little repair in private. All of them could be reported to the state's observation envoy. The observation envoy reported to the court's Ministry of Works, and the Ministry of Works and the observation envoy sent people to the local area for verification.

If you look for observation and make the report useless, you can go directly to Beijing to find an inspector of the Ministry of Justice or the censor. Anyway, there must be judicial relief measures.

After analyzing these clauses, all the court officials present even had a illusion: the scale of concessions given to the people by the new tax law in the transportation tax process is very large. In this way, the subsequent official business and franchise sales, even if it is a little more stringent, does not seem so difficult to accept.
Chapter completed!