(This is more difficult, because I haven’t seen any book that restores the scene of rural tax collection in the Ming Dynasty. Please vote, there will be more in the evening.)
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The system design of the dynasty was entirely determined by the will of the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. For example, in collecting taxes, he believed that corrupt officials would take advantage of the opportunity to live in a fishy country and make the people miserable, so he came up with the method of "governing good people by good people". According to
According to the level of taxation, a county is divided into several grain districts. Among them, the wealthy households with the most fields and the best reputation are the grain chiefs, who are fully responsible for collecting taxed grains.
Usually, a grain chief is responsible for tax collection tasks ranging from several thousand to ten thousand dan, but there are also as few as several hundred dan. This is mainly related to the geographical environment of the prefecture and county. In a place like Fuyang County with "eight mountains, half water and half fields", the population lives
It is scattered and has little arable land. A grain chief is basically responsible for the tax collection of a township, more than ten miles and more than a thousand stones.
Every tax season, the grain chief and deputy grain chief of the district will notify the village chiefs to organize villagers to pay taxes at the designated place on the designated date. During this period, the government will send a clerk to act as an accountant and also perform supervision.
This semi-official collection method is naturally not very efficient. At most two or three people in a day can pay the tax. If the collection is completed in seven or eight days, it is considered very powerful.
In fact, there are quite a few. There are two to three hundred households within two or three miles. Every household must account for their money. The work is indeed very arduous. Therefore, these days of collecting grain, the grain director and the county clerk's office go to the river before dawn.
At the pier, the table was set up, the books were spread out, and the people waited for the people to come and pay their taxes.
As soon as the sky cleared, there were more than a dozen open boats, breaking through the early morning fog, approaching the river pier in Shangxinxiang. The boats were covered with straw mats, which lowered the hull very low. Naturally, they were filled with new rice...
This is the village nearest to the town, where people come to pay their taxes.
Supervisor Chao on the dock loudly reminded the leader of the team to park the boats as densely as possible to leave space for the boats that would later pay their dues.
There are ten households in a li, a total of 110 households. Among them, the top ten households are called the li chief households, and the heads of the households take turns to be the li chiefs. The remaining 100 households are called the head households of the li, and the heads of the households take turns to be the heads of the li.
.Therefore, under the head of the village, there are always ten heads of Jia, and each head of Jia is in charge of ten households.
The headman ordered the chiefs to do as they were told, and he jumped onto the pier and came to the end of the narrow trestle. He saw a long table in front of him. On the table were account books and ink, and two chairs were placed behind the table. On the left chair
Sitting is Chao Tianjiao, who is wearing a purple straight jacket and a Liuhe hat on his head. Sitting on the right is a young man wearing an official scarf and a white shirt. He should be the secretary from the county.
The Li Chang bowed to the two of them, and then said to Chao Tianjiao: "Justice, our autumn grain from Shibali has been shipped, please accept it."
"Yes." Chao Tianjiao twitched his beard and looked at Wang Xian. After he nodded, he said, "As a rule, the better families come first."
"Just and noble people often forget things. We don't have any high-class households in Shibali." The head of the village said with a smile.
"Again, we have to pay according to the double-checked books." Chao Tianjiao flipped through the account books and said: "There are three households in total, one for the upper, middle and lower."
"Ah..." Li Chang said a little confused: "I haven't heard of it before."
"Didn't you hear about this?" Chao Tianjiao said slowly: "There are also ten more middle households. Here, here is the list. Tell these thirteen households and ask them to pay some of them first today.
, I’ll make up for it tomorrow, or pay it all together tomorrow.” He coughed and said, “Let the others pay the tax first.”
"This, at this time, how do I explain..." The chief held the list and said sadly: "Anyone who raises the household level will have to curse me to death." The Ming Dynasty divided the people into three grades and nine grades according to their land, wealth and population.
Then, the lower the level, the lower the tax rate, and the higher the level, the higher the tax rate. The lowest tax for lower-class households is thirty-one, and the highest tax is ten-one for upper-class households. The difference is three times. No wonder the people will
He is so low-key and humble, and his family owns thousands of acres of fertile land. He also says that he is from a middle-class family. Anyone who has a family of hundreds of acres of land is treating himself as a lower class person.
Of course, it is up to the government to have the final say on what to classify, which creates a huge space for rent-seeking. Every year during the registration season, it is a feast for the household clerks, village chiefs, and village chiefs. Everyone's personal interests are related, and everyone
No household dares to save this money. After taking the money, you have to do things for others, and now you tell them that you can't do it. Not only is it painful to get the money back, but you also have the trouble of inequality.
Why is it my family and not others? Those unlucky families must scold him to death.
"Just tell them directly!" Standing next to Chao Tianjiao was his younger brother Chao Dijiao. Hearing this, he rolled his eyes and said, "No matter what, they have to pay this amount this year. If they don't want to pay, that's fine."
Okay. After the expiration date, the government will catch up with you, and then you can slowly argue with the boss."
Regardless of the fact that the first half of the tax collection process is based on "good people administering good people", it is non-compulsory. But once arrears occur, the government will show its ferocious face and send people to the countryside to urge classes. This kind of harassment can be described as a riot.
, the ghosts cry and the wolves howl. If you still fail to pay the debt, the government will chase you, slap the ban, and stand on the shackles. You will have to make up for the tax arrears even if you are bankrupt...
Seeing that he couldn't reason with him, the village chief had to turn back and let the villagers in the first class pay the tax first. However, one of them was left behind and said: "Your family has been upgraded to a medium-high level."
"Why?" The man's reaction was exactly the same, he was shocked and said: "Didn't you make a reservation for the lower class and the upper class?"
"This is the bastard's ass - the rule!" The chief said, spreading his hands: "I have been promoted to the upper-middle class, where can I reason with you?"
"No, I also gave you money!" The villager was straightforward and said angrily from his simple heart: "Why doesn't my family get a raise if others don't?"
The villagers cast sympathetic glances at him one after another.
"Are you happy that everyone is going up?" the village chief said angrily: "The county master thinks it's too loose, so he just tightens it up! This year your family will get more points, and next year his family will get more points. It only happens once every ten years. How about that?"
What the hell!" He scolded the others: "Why don't you hurry up and pay the tax? Do you want to follow the increase?"
The sympathy of the villagers turned to anger, and they ignored the quarrel between him and the village chief. They rushed to unload the boat and queued up to hand over the grain with their burdens.
The first villager to hand in food reported his name to Chao Zhenggong. Chao Tianjiao looked through his family's register and sang: "Eighteen miles away, there is a first-class household, the head of the household is Ji Danian, the inferior is the superior,
Pay three dou and six liters of rice and seven taels of silk." What he used was not the white book approved by the government, but the private book of his own statistics.
That Ji DaNian responded and handed a bunch of silk to the tax collector. The deputy grain director grabbed it and said with a straight face: "It's too tidal to weigh the scale, give me a 20% discount, and you should receive nine taels!"
This is telling lies with open eyes, but the people have been used to it for so many years. Ji Danian smiled and said: "Look at it, it's exactly nine taels." People are killed by swords, and I am fish and meat. If you dare to object, you will be treated as such.
At this moment, he was still playing tricks on the scale, insisting that you hand over a pound.
The deputy grain chief here weighed the silk and sang: "Silk is tax-paying!"
Over there, Ji Danian's two sons encountered the same trouble when delivering grain. Chao Dijiao, who was collecting the grain, grabbed a handful of rice and said: "It's too tide to weigh the scale! 10% off! Four buckets due!"
Ji Danian's two sons also did not dare to sigh. They carefully poured the white rice on their burdens into the dendrobium with the words "four buckets" written on it... The dendrobium is the standard container used by the government to measure grain.
There is no need to weigh the grains, just use different dendrobium to combine them.
According to regulations, the grain in Huli must be filled to the top, and it must also exceed the walls of Huli and be piled in a pointed pile shape... The two sons of the Ji family, according to the requirements, piled Huli as full as possible, and they were about to breathe a sigh of relief that the taxes were finally paid.
. But I saw Chao Dijiao rolled up the lower part of his robe, took two steps back, concentrated on holding his breath, and let his energy sink into his Dantian. Then he shouted loudly, rushed to the front of Dendrobium, and kicked it violently!
The rice that exceeded the portion of the wall naturally fell to the ground. The Ji family's son hurriedly went to pick it up, but heard Chao Dijiao shout loudly: "Don't pick it up, it's a loss. Didn't you hear? If you pick it up again, don't hand it over!"
The Ji family's son had no choice but to fill the bottle with dendrobium...
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Wang Xian, who witnessed this scene, was naturally stunned.
Chao Tianjiao on the side said slightly proudly: "This kick is called 'kicking the dendrobium's tip'. Kicking the dendrobium can make the rice grains thicker and thicker for refilling. The tip that falls off is considered a waste."
"Are the villagers convinced?" Wang Xian swallowed his saliva and said, with this kick, he would pay at least half a bucket of rice more.
"If you don't accept it, you don't have to hand it in. When you wait for the government to collect the money, you'll be wasting more than this." Chao Tianjiao said nonchalantly: "It's been like this for thousands of years, so what can you do if you don't accept it?"
"Oh, it's really not necessary..." Wang Xianxin said, wouldn't the effect be the same if the dendrobium was made slightly larger, and it would look better when eaten.
"Haha..." Chao Tianjiao said with a smile: "Half of the rice scattered on the ground belongs to the small officials..."
"Well..." Wang Xian coughed twice. His father had told him that he couldn't take money that would kill his conscience, and he didn't have to refuse "to stay and make a living" because if you didn't take it, it would all go into other people's pockets, and they would call you a stupid pig.
…
Emperor Taizu was considerate of the people and set a very low tax rate. Even with these extra expenses, the villagers could afford it. This was also the advantage of letting the grain chief collect taxes. They were born and raised and did not dare to exploit too much and provoke civil unrest.
, basically it will not exceed the affordability of the villagers.
After a busy day, we collected food from 330 households and 1,500 people in three li. In fact, after more than 40 years of recuperation, the number of people in these three li has exceeded 2,000. However, in order to avoid taxes, all of them
If you hide it and don’t report it, you will become a black account. Therefore, regardless of the disadvantage of paying taxes, it is still full of secret wars with tax collection...
As for the tax collector, Chao Zhenggong collected two accounts...according to the standards of the Hongwu period and the white book approved by the government. During the collection, almost 20% was retained. The 22% was divided into accounts.
Twenty percent went to Chao Tianjiao, and 80% was taken back to the Yamen by Wang Xian and handed over to the household for processing.
As for the grain on the ground, the government does not see it, and the tax collectors divide it privately, so it is said to be a lucrative job.
When it gets dark, the taxable grain has been put into the warehouse, and the retained part is sold directly to grain merchants and transported overnight...