Chapter 38 Income and Expenditure in the Park (Part 1)
He has an additional 2,200 acres of land in his name, of which only 100 acres are in the yellow list and need to be taxed. Logically speaking, this should be a good thing, but Gao Pragmatic feels that his situation has suddenly changed.
Become embarrassed.
According to his thinking, anyone's property in the world should pay taxes unless it is exempted from tax by law - for example, it is temporarily exempt from tax to promote the development of a certain industry. In his opinion, taxation should not be regarded as a thing.
For exploitation, because that is the necessary basis for the country to maintain normal operations and regulate the macro economy.
Taxation should and must be taken from the people and used for the people. In fact, the ancients did not have this idea, but in actual operations they always went astray.
More than two thousand acres of land is not considered a small industry. If you look at it outside, this alone can squeeze you into the threshold of a big landowner. However, although Gao Pragmatic also intends to make money for himself, he does not want to "evade taxes".
According to Zhang Jin’s brief introduction, the average yield of these two thousand acres of land is not high, but in fact, in North China at this time, it is not very low, about two hundred
The two thousand acres of land are equivalent to two hundred thousand jins of grain every year.
Since the yield per mu in the north is lower than in the south, the tax standards near Gyeonggi are actually quite low. Especially because the Gyeonggi area is densely populated and the food output is not high. In order to ensure the food supply in the Gyeonggi area, the imperial court did not implement a whipping law here.
, but continue to collect physical taxes. This physical tax is very low. Calculating the average tax rate, it is only about one-fortieth of the output. Even if it is 200,000 jins, the physical tax payable is actually only 5,000 jins per year.
Just food.
In later generations, the flour extraction rate of wheat was very high, but in the Ming Dynasty, the flour extraction rate of wheat was relatively low. A 60% flour extraction rate was considered good, so if these five thousand kilograms of wheat were replaced with flour, it would be
About three thousand kilograms.
As for the price of flour, Gao Pingshi had calculated it before when he got his first payment from Zhang. The price of one hundred kilograms of flour was only one tael of silver, and the price of three thousand kilograms of flour... was equivalent to paying thirty taels of silver.
tax.
Yes, it's only thirty taels of silver.
What is the concept of thirty taels of silver?
The pragmatic uncle Zhang Siwei was worried that his nephew would lose face when he came to his villa as a master for the first time and saw that his servants couldn't even give him a reward, so he gave him five thousand taels directly!
This is five thousand taels!
If these five thousand taels of silver are used to pay taxes on Sanshen Garden and its properties, even if there is not even an acre of hidden land, the tax payable can be paid in full for one hundred and sixty-six years!
The Ming Dynasty raised scholars for two hundred years, but the scholars refused to pay even such a small amount of taxes honestly. Thinking of this, Gao Pragmatic felt really sad for the Ming Dynasty court.
In later generations, due to the influence of "Fan Jin's Successful Examination" in "The Scholars", there is a view that in the Ming Dynasty, as long as the people were elected or above, they were exempted from tax. In fact, this is wrong and not that exaggerated - at least this was not said during the Wanli period.
In fact, Ming Dynasty has a certain bottom line, and it has a relatively clear quota of tax-free land.
For example, Jinshi can have 2,000 acres of tax-free land, while Juren's tax-free land is 400 acres. As for scholars, the tax-free land is 80 acres.
Gao Pragmatic has known this data since he was "sensible" in this life. So he once had a very rough calculation.
The imperial examination in the Ming Dynasty was held every three years, and about 300 people were admitted each time. On average, almost 100 people were admitted every year. If we assume that everyone can live for 25 years after becoming a Jinshi, then under normal circumstances in the Ming Dynasty,
There will be 2,500 living Jinshis in the country - this is probably the number of officials above seventh rank in the country, of course only civil servants.
The situation is a little more complicated. Larger provinces, such as Nanzhili, admit 120 to 130 people per subject. Smaller provinces, such as Jiangxi Province, admit 90 people every year. Ming Dynasty has 13 people.
In the province, there are about 1,300 candidates for each subject. If we count some more, including 1,500 people, then on average there will be 500 candidates every year. If the average life after winning the examination is thirty years
, then the Ming Dynasty usually has fifteen thousand living people.
As for the number of scholars, it is difficult to estimate, but usually there are 2,000 people in each provincial examination. Considering that some of them should not be qualified to participate in the provincial examination, on average, there should be 5,000 or 13 people in a province.
Including other places in the province, there are about 70,000 people.
Of course, this estimate is just a very general estimate made by a highly pragmatic individual. The accuracy is definitely not much higher, but it is more or less a reference value.
So, based on this calculation, the tax-free land for Jinshi nationwide is about 5 million acres; the tax-free land for Juren is about 6 million acres; the tax-free land for scholars is not even 6 million acres, about 560 acres.
About 10,000 acres.
How much is the total tax-free land in the country? Five million plus six million, plus five million six million, the total is only 16.6 million acres.
How much cultivated land was there in the Ming Dynasty? At least 900 million acres.
The gentry who received tax exemptions because of their studies accounted for 16.6 million acres, or 54% of the total cultivated land in the country.
Is this ratio high? Obviously not high, because according to this data, if the gentry did not deliberately evade taxes, this land would not actually have a serious impact on the economic foundation of the Ming Dynasty. This is also the case for a certain person in later generations.
In a well-known book on economic history, a famous scholar named Huang concluded that not only was the Ming Dynasty not "serious in land annexation," but the trouble lay in the theoretical basis that land annexation was not serious.
Judging from the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty, the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty during the Xuande period was about 27 million shi. Historically, the agricultural tax in the sixth year of Wanli was roughly 26.7 million shi. The difference between the two is not big.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! But the problem is that the gentry are not really satisfied with this level of tax exemption, even though they already have a quite large amount of tax-free land. But maybe it is really
No one thinks he has too much money, so it would be better if he could give less to the court and the emperor - anyway, "His Majesty is rich all over the world", so why bother "competing with the people for profit"?
As for the specific situation when Emperor Longqing ascended the throne and wanted to buy a batch of jewelry for the harem, but was rejected by the civil servants, that is the way we civil servants should behave - to the emperor Yao and Shun!
Your majesty is required to follow the standards of Yao and Shun, which is the ardent expectation of your ministers. How can you live in peace and enjoy yourself and buy jewelry for your woman? If this continues, the country will not be a country, your majesty!
As for people like Xu Jie, who originally came from a poor family, why did they have so much land after being an official for decades, but were found out by Hai Rui... Well, well, this is mainly because Hai Rui is ignorant.
, cannot take on the heavy responsibility at all!
But in reality? What happened to paying some taxes?
In fact, even if there is no tax exemption, the tax rate in Ming Dynasty is already extremely low, only one-thirtieth of the highest. In percentage terms, the tax rate is less than 4%, which is the lowest in all dynasties! You must know that New China
Before the agricultural tax was exempted, the average agricultural tax rate was 15.5% of annual output.
But why is it that with such a low tax rate, once problems arise in the country, such as after the Tunguska Boar Skin Rebellion in history, the national finances will quickly fall into trouble, leading to civil unrest? Is it because the common people, Kuhaha, are so valuable?
There are indeed many reasons here, and the additional tax does have to be counted. It’s just strange, because the original tax rate was only 4%. Even if the tax is doubled, it will reach the normal level during the Tang Dynasty, but you have to
Knowing that the agricultural level of the Ming Dynasty has improved to a certain extent compared to the Tang Dynasty, why did a little extra tax lead to a situation of chaos all over the land?
This issue must be clarified for Gao Pragmatic to implement reforms in the future. He needs to combine some of the research materials he saw in his previous life and some of his own thinking with the actual situation he is currently encountering.
But he estimated that one of the important reasons must be that the wealthy and powerful have a large amount of hidden land!
Therefore, as a time-traveler who seriously wants to "save civilization" through reform rather than revolution, he really wants to make his hidden fields public, but this idea was just mentioned by Zhang Jin.
