As the proportion of commercial tax has increased to 20%, the share of commercial tax levied in the entire tax system has also become larger and larger.
In the past, land tax definitely accounted for the majority. Now, business taxes have increased sharply year by year, and they are gradually replacing land tax and ranking first.
At this time, Yuzhu's land tax reform, which had been brewing for a long time, was immediately put on the agenda.
During the pre-Qing Dynasty, the collection of land taxes mainly relied on county government servants and grain gentry in various places, and the quota system was also adopted.
This tax system has great disadvantages. Often, when the court receives a land tax of one tael, county officials, servants and grain gentry have to take a kickback of five to eight taels.
County offices in the former Qing Dynasty seemed to have very few officials. At most, they were just the magistrate, the county magistrate and the chief registrar.
In fact, the poorer the county in the west, the more subordinate officials and servants it has.
According to Yuzhu's knowledge, Yumen County, the poorest county in the west, has a total population of less than 10,000, but the number of subordinate officials and servants supported by the county government exceeds 1,000.
This is because in poor and remote places, the folk customs are often violent. With fewer people in the yamen, it is impossible to use violence to collect land taxes and bring them back.
The evil deeds of pulling pigs, dragging cattle, grabbing pots, tearing down door panels, and even robbing farmers' wives and selling them for money are repeated in poor counties in the central and western regions.
Now, due to the substantial increase in commercial taxes, and the local police stations under the direct jurisdiction of the imperial court, they have been fully established.
Based on this, Yuzhu can already free up his hands to organize subordinate staff, servants and tax system.
"Your Majesty, if in Shaanxi, Gansu and other poor western counties, all farmers with less than 20 acres of land are taxed 30 per cent, then the imperial court's annual income will be greatly reduced." Zhang Tingyu has been in charge of the household department.
The reform of the tax system is closely related to him.
The tax system is a matter of national importance and should not be taken carelessly.
Yuzhu also liked that Zhang Tingyu took the initiative to stand up and argue with him.
"Hengchen, take Yumen County as an example. There are only 2,000 households in the county, but the county government actually has more than 1,000 servants. Well, most of these people are white servants who do not receive salaries. However,
These people also need to eat, marry, have children, and support their families. How can they work for the county government for nothing?" Yuzhu picked up the tea cup, took a sip of tea, and said, "Why is the west always in chaos?
Look, the root problem is the unscrupulous officials and villains, who are exploiting us too hard."
Financial issues are important matters of the country and have nothing to do with forming gangs, so Zhang Tingyu dares to discuss them.
"Back to the emperor, I think that since the Qin Dynasty, county governance has been the most important thing in all dynasties. If county governance is suddenly moved, I am afraid that the place will be unrest!" Zhang Tingyu considered the problem, and it was indeed relatively far away.
However, Zhang Tingyu's way of thinking about problems never broke out of the mold of the prefecture and county system after the Qin Dynasty.
If it weren't for insufficient fiscal revenue, all dynasties would have wanted imperial power to enter the village.
The reason why I chose to extend imperial power to counties is because I was worried that the management cost of raising people would be much higher than the taxes levied.
The reason why Zhang Tingyu's ideas are outdated is because he did not realize eight words: transfer payment, lenient reporting and strict investigation.
The land tax collected by the entire Shaanxi and Gansu provinces was only one million taels of silver.
Among the empire's fiscal revenue, it is not worth mentioning at all.
Not to mention anything else, North Korea's tribute of 5 million taels of silver and 1 million shi of grain alone overwhelmed Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.
To be honest, without external colonial income, how could the internal burden of the empire be continuously reduced?
The colonial history of the British Empire has proved that if the empire wants to hide wealth among the people, there must be people from outside to bear the necessary management costs for the people of the empire.
The civilian industrial products of the former Soviet Union had backward technology and inferior products, and were completely unable to capture the wool of the wealthy Western markets.
Therefore, the Soviet Empire has always focused on squeezing the people within the Soviet Union, only focusing on military production and not paying attention to hiding wealth among the people.
300 million Soviet people had to queue up to buy bread every day. Their overall consumption power was not as good as that of West Germany. How could it last long?
The Soviet Union was fighting the Seven Injury Fists. The more developed its military industry was, the more suffering the people suffered.
As time goes by, the Soviet Union will definitely be the first to implode, unable to hold on any longer.
Yuzhu's tax reform is mainly to provide continuous tax reductions to citizens in the western region.
In the small-peasant society, the main income of the two western provinces is from eating food from the fields.
Now, after the police stations in various places have been established, the imperial court can completely bring the imperial power into the villages.
In layman's terms, that is to say, in the western region, less land tax is collected, or even no land tax is collected, and only business tax is collected.
The corresponding tax gap was made up by North Korea's tribute silver and rice.
As a result, the vast number of homesteaders in the western region have become the biggest beneficiaries.
Forced immigration to the border has been proven to be a dead end.
Even if Yuzhu relied on the majesty of the founder of the country to forcibly move the people from the mainland to the border areas, over time, there will inevitably be many people fleeing.
Economic laws dictate that the income in that barren land in the west is too little.
For example, the military household system established by Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty only experienced a large number of military households fleeing collectively after only a few decades of development.
This problem cannot be solved by issuing a decree.
The root cause is still the hereditary military officers. When you took office, you usurped 500 acres, and when he took office, he encroached on a thousand acres. As time goes by, the military households will not be able to survive at all if they do not escape.
The reform of the tax system is a big deal, and Yuzhu plans to implement the new tax system starting from the poorest areas of Gansu and Shaanxi.
In a nutshell, the new tax system means that farmers with an area of less than 20 acres will be taxed as little as possible, or even not taxed at all.
However, land between 20 and 100 acres will be subject to the original tax system.
If the land exceeds 100 acres, the more land there is, the heavier the tax will be.
Moreover, the new tax collection method has also been changed, from door-to-door tax collection to a method in which the landlord actively declares the tax and the court sends people to do random inspections.
Facts have proved that if we ignore everything and cover everything, the management costs will inevitably be unbearable, and the burden on the people will also be extremely heavy.
After changing to a random inspection system, the imperial court would directly send people to carry out detailed verification based on the landlord's declaration information.
If you dare to evade taxes, you won't kill anyone. You will only be fined 10,000 times.
For example, if Zhang Ju's family has ten thousand acres of fertile land, if he dares to evade taxes on one mu, he will have to change his surname for ten thousand acres of fertile land.
As for random checks, they may not come to check you for fifty years. But once they are found on you, more than a hundred people will go to your home to check.
As long as the reward and punishment measures for the inspectors are set, Yuzhu can completely eliminate most of the vampires in the poor counties in the west, and the tax revenue can only be more, not less.
Allowing the county government officials to support their servants and prohibiting the county government officials from doing anything is to hide wealth among the people. This is the most important thing in governing the western region!