Chapter 1148: 100 million taels of fiscal expenditure budget
At present, the main source of the Tang Empire's fiscal revenue is taxation, and when the taxation policy remains constant and generally does not change much, the extent of the entire economic growth can basically be inferred from the taxation revenue.
Li Xuan is quite satisfied with the current increase in fiscal revenue, because fiscal revenue can still maintain this growth rate without significantly increasing the tax rate, which means that the economic growth rate is relatively stable and healthy.
Not mentioning the issue of economic growth, the Budget Department of the Ministry of Finance gave a budget revenue of 86 million taels for the eleventh year of Xuanping. Now the various departments of the military and cabinet are trying to divide these 86 million taels.
Arguing over a million taels of silver.
This kind of argument basically happens at the end of every year. Both Li Xuan and the ministers are used to it. This kind of quarrel will always lead to a result.
Now Li Xuan is too lazy to care. Anyway, the general framework has been drawn up, just wait for them to come up with the details!
The annual budget drama actually starts in early December, but according to previous years' management, it is usually finalized in late December, that is, before the Spring Festival, so that next year's detailed budget can be formulated.
, so by mid-December, the quarrels among the ministers became more and more intense.
By the end of the year, almost all the ministers on duty in the royal study room had begun to go shirtless.
However, they had become aware of Li Xuan's temper in the past few years, and they did not dare to flood Li Xuan's desk with a lot of excerpts. Instead, they constantly held meetings with the ministers on duty in the Imperial Study Room to argue with each other.
Negotiate, compromise, and exchange benefits during arguments.
If they go directly to the budget brochure as before, Li Xuan won't even read it and just leave it in without posting. If they directly go to Li Xuan to discuss the budget issue, Li Xuan will refuse to see them.
If the budget issue was discussed during a meeting about other matters, Li Xuan could just put on a bad face and drive the person away.
Therefore, now they do not dare to bother Li Xuan, they conduct internal negotiations within a general framework, and then strive to obtain a plan agreed by all parties and submit it to Li Xuan.
On December 27th of the 10th year of Xuanping, the Spring Festival was going to be celebrated in a few days. The ministers on duty in the imperial study finally made the final budget allocation plan and finally sent it to Li Xuan.
Although Li Xuan doesn't care about small details, he always has to pay attention to the big budget issue. He wants to ensure that the budget allocation does not deviate from the big framework he has set.
What is the big framework? The big framework means that the military budget should be above 20 million, but not more than 30 million. The specific amount will be negotiated between the military and the cabinet.
Then there is the budget allocation within the cabinet. Li Xuan has already finalized several of them in the autumn. For example, education funding. This year’s education funding must reach 3 million taels. This is a bottom line. As for the final limit, it can exceed 3 million taels.
The number of one million depends on the energy of the Ministry of Rites. If you work harder, you can strive for more. If you don't work hard, you will probably be able to stick to the bottom line of three million.
Although the education policy formulated by Li Xuan is an elite education policy, this elite education policy is only limited to secondary and higher education. As for basic education, Li Xuan advocates large-scale popularization. Li Xuan hopes that in the next few years, local
Primary school education can be brought to a higher level, but basic education can only be organized by local gentry themselves, and it is difficult to popularize private schools on a large scale. However, there are still too few government-run primary schools, generally only one in a county.
It is inappropriate for a county to have only one government-run primary school. There must be at least two!
Therefore, basic education funding must be increased!
During the previous Unification War, everything was in service of the war, and education funding could be said to be almost zero. However, in the 9th and 10th years of Xuanping, the focus was on restoring people's livelihood, so education was still left behind.
Next year, Li Xuan plans to invest some funds in basic education.
Then Li Xuan delineated funds for water conservancy construction. He required Xuanping to secure four million taels of water conservancy facility funds in the eleventh year. This money was intended to be spent on the Yangtze River, Yellow River, and the major water systems of the Yellow River and Pearl River.
Flood control funds are used to dredge rivers and build dams.
Just like education funding, water conservancy funding has always been lacking. In other words, since the founding of the Tang Dynasty, there has been no serious large-scale water conservancy construction.
In the past, water conservancy construction was a spontaneous initiative of local governments and relied on local finance. However, the central finance spent a total of less than one million taels of silver in the past ten years.
This has also led to the fact that the flood control facilities in major river systems, especially the Yellow River, Yangtze River, and Huaihe River, are generally old and have considerable hidden dangers. Local officials along the rivers frequently request the central government to allocate funds for the construction of water conservancy facilities.
Next year, Li Xuan plans to fill some of the water conservancy loopholes. Otherwise, if it takes a few years, there will be a major flood and it will be over.
As for other matters, he did not set any mandatory requirements and let each department negotiate on their own.
After reading the fiscal expenditure budget for the eleventh year of Xuanping, Li Xuan made a slight request. These ministers are really good at being naughty.
Generally speaking, there is no problem with the allocation ratio of this budget, but there is a problem with the total amount!
The first item is the military expenditure budget. The budget is 25 million taels of silver. This number is normal. With the current military scale of the Tang Dynasty, it indeed requires more than 20 million taels of silver to maintain it. Among them, alone
The Army's family spends about 20 million every year.
But the key thing is the proportion. The proportion of 25 million taels of silver only accounts for 25% of the total expenditure budget.
In other words, the total amount of this expenditure budget is not the 86 million taels of the fiscal revenue budget, but 100 million taels of silver!
The total budget has increased, and everyone is satisfied with the expenditure budgets of the following departments!
But one hundred million taels of silver?
There is a fart!
The fiscal revenue budget is 86 million taels of silver. If we do not plan to issue large-scale government bonds, we will not be able to collect 100 million taels of silver. As for filling the internal treasury, which is very common in other dynasties, I am sorry.
There was no such custom in the Tang Dynasty.
Moreover, the emperor’s inner treasury actually didn’t have much money!
The main income of the emperor's inner treasury is the annual royal expenses. In fact, most of this part of the funds is used to maintain the operation of the Guards and Hantong, and it does not even account for much royal expenses.
Last year, the royal family spent a total of more than 600,000 taels of silver. What's more important is that of the more than 600,000 taels of silver, more than 400,000 were funds provided by the Royal Assets Department. In other words, the royal family spent a lot of money on the country.
The income is only over 200,000 taels of silver.
This figure is really not that big for the royal family expenses of a huge empire!
Just the annual maintenance of the palace courtyard, routine rewards to ministers, and the maintenance of royal institutions cost more than these hundreds of thousands taels of silver.
As for the royal family’s food and drink expenses, that hasn’t even been taken into account.
Strictly speaking, in fact, the royal family has not spent a penny from the national treasury over the years, and their food and drink expenses basically rely on funds provided by the Royal Assets Division.
Li Xuan thought that as an emperor, he was already good enough. He spent all his private money and did not touch a penny from the national treasury. Sometimes he even paid back money.
Therefore, in this case, the Tang Dynasty did not have a tradition of allocating money from the internal treasury. As for the royal family's private money, that is, the funds in the royal family's assets, there was some, but it was really not much, and it was definitely not
Most of them are various fixed assets, especially enterprises, which do not have much working capital.
The Royal Assets Department, to a certain extent, should be a large comprehensive group company. The company has many assets, but its working capital is only about a few million taels of silver. Once it is misappropriated, it will directly affect the group company.
of operation.
These activity funds were basically Li Xuan's last lifeblood. He did not allow the Royal Assets Department to misappropriate them for investment, nor did he convert them into numbers in a bank account, but converted them into gold and stored them in the palace.
What are you going to use it for?
Naturally, they are prepared to be used as military expenses for the Guards in the event of any unrest.
This is money used to save lives, so even if the entire empire's economy collapses, Li Xuan will not use these millions of taels of gold.
There is no money in the internal treasury, and the money from the Royal Assets Department cannot be misappropriated, so the only feasible way left is to issue national bonds, and those ministers also proposed this.
In the expenditure budget plan, they proposed to issue 20 million silver in national bonds, of which 14 million would be used to fill the gap in the expenditure budget, and the remaining 6 million would be used as emergency reserve funds.
After Li Xuan read it, he muttered: "What a beautiful idea!"
Damn, in the past, there was a fiscal deficit every year, and national bonds were issued every year. In the past, it was easy to say that during the war, there was no way to issue national bonds. Now the fiscal revenue is getting higher and higher, and there is no war, and the people's livelihood economy is also improving.
Gradually recovering, Li Xuan is unwilling to issue huge amounts of national debt anymore.
The national debt owed now amounts to more than 40 million taels of silver, and the annual interest repayment will cost several million taels of silver. If we borrow more, the fiscal revenue will not be enough to repay the interest in the future.
The most that can be done is to issue another period of treasury bonds to repay the principal of the treasury bonds in full. As for using the treasury bonds for other expenditures after issuance, especially for administrative expenses, Li Xuan is not allowed.
Li Xuan directly rejected the proposal, and then gave a death limit of 86 million, with no more than one tael of silver allowed.
Li Xuan was determined to keep the fiscal balance in the eleventh year of Xuanping no matter what. The fiscal deficit must not be the same as before. There is a fiscal deficit every year. Sooner or later, the entire empire's finances will be dragged down by the deficit.
died.
https:
A genius can remember the address of this website in one second:..:m.