During the Unification War, the Tang Dynasty confiscated a large number of former Ming Dynasty clans and the property of powerful people.
The large amounts of land obtained during this kind of inspection, and the official land controlled by the former Ming government offices, naturally became official land of the Tang Dynasty. Naturally, the land of some local gentry and dignitaries was also accepted by the government and became official land.
part.
As for the land belonging to the clans and dignitaries of the Ming Dynasty, it was turned into imperial land after being confiscated. The amount of this part of land was extremely large. The vassals and dignitaries of the former Ming Dynasty owned too much land. The Royal Assets Section finally
According to statistics, it was found that these royal fields already account for 10% of the total cultivated land area in the country.
Li Xuan doesn't care if it's only tens of thousands of acres, or even hundreds of thousands of acres, but this is no longer calculated in terms of acres, but 10% of the total cultivated land in the country!
Treat it as the private property of the clan?
Just kidding, only a nonsense dynasty like the Ming Dynasty could do such a thing.
So at that time, Li Xuan took out most of the imperial land and used it together with the official land as land for rent and purchase, which was basically the same as the official land.
Only a very small amount of land that is more convenient or not suitable for renting and purchasing is left as the private property of the royal family. Although the amount of this part of the royal land left is still huge, compared with before, it is naturally the ratio of a sea to a drop of water.
, there is absolutely no comparison.
Imperial land and official land were merged together, and then used as land for rent and purchase. Over the years, most of the land has been gradually converted into farmers' private property. The remaining land can generally be privatized by farmers within ten years.
.
Because of the rent-to-purchase order, farmers can freely choose installment payments ranging from five, ten, or fifteen years.
According to the latest batch of land, if the farmers adopt the rent-to-purchase method for fifteen years, the rent-to-purchase method will end in the thirty-sixth year of Xuanping at the latest, and the farmers will officially obtain the ownership of these lands.
This also means that by the thirty-sixth year of Xuanping, there was actually a large amount of arable land under the control of both the royal family and the government. Except for the newly reclaimed official land in a very few areas and the very few imperial fields reserved by the royal family, other
All land will become farmers' private property.
Of course, the above only refers to domestic domestic cultivated land. Domestic wasteland and forestland are not included. The government and the royal family still own a large amount of it, and the proportion is extremely large, because most places in the contemporary era are actually still mainly deserted, and these seem to be deserted.
Those places are all official land.
Without exception!
At the same time, overseas mainland and overseas territories are not within this scope. The policies of these places are relatively special.
The rent-to-purchase order is only enforceable in the empire!
And there is no need to worry that these lands will be annexed by landlords on a large scale in the future, because any land acquired through renting and purchasing can only be inherited and cannot be directly traded.
For other private lands, the government cannot control their sales, but for official land and imperial land, the government naturally has the final say.
That is, private sales are not allowed. If you accept it, you can rent it instead of buying it. If you don't, get out.
Even so, not everyone can apply for rent-to-purchase. Only farmers with local household registrations who have no land or very little land can apply. They can only be approved after passing special review by multiple departments. Don’t worry about the review being incomplete.
Strictly, let people who own land obtain land purchased by renting, because one of the review agencies is the tax department.
Even if the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Household Affairs, or simply the local government offices don't know how much land they have under their control and who owns it, the Tax Department definitely knows.
People are studying how much money and property the people have all day long, and how to collect more taxes there while avoiding a large-scale rebound.
You have to know that the national arable land measurement, which was completed only 20 years ago in Xuanping, was not completed by the Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of Household Affairs, but by the Ministry of Taxation itself!
The tax department measures land just for better tax collection!
Therefore, if you already own land and then want to obtain government land through leasing and purchasing, you cannot hide it from the eyes of the tax department.
If you do not register the land on the surface, but hide it, the tax department will not be polite, because this is tax evasion, and they will come to arrest you in minutes.
Since the founding of the Tang Dynasty, tax evasion has been a major crime!
The unified point is that the tax inspection team under the Ministry of Taxation is famous. I don’t know how many gentry’s homes have been raided and how many people have been killed!
It can be said that the tax department does a better job than the patrol department in maintaining local public security, cracking down on bad gentry, and arresting heinous criminals. Many patrol departments are criminals who have no choice but to be accused of tax evasion by the tax department in the end.
Arrested and sent to jail.
Under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, you did a lot of illegal and criminal things, and you could avoid them as long as you covered them up well, but you want to evade taxes?
dream!
So far, the Department of Taxation is still the agency directly under the cabinet with the largest number of employees at all levels and the largest annual expenditures in Datang. Although the armed tax inspection team directly under it has been reformed, it has been changed to the tax police directly under each tax bureau.
However, tax police from all parts of the country, including tax inspection teams in various overseas territories, are gathered together, and they are still allowed to be equipped with guns and artillery, grenades and even small-tonnage warships. Therefore, both in terms of personnel and equipment level,
They are still the third largest armed force in the Tang Empire.
Originally they were only the fourth largest armed force in the empire, but now after the reform of the company fleet, they have been directly integrated into the army and navy and have become history. Therefore, the tax police in various parts of the tax department have naturally become the empire's third largest armed force.
The three major armed forces.
As for the patrol police, they only have a large number of people and are only equipped with light weapons, but they definitely do not have sharp weapons such as field guns and warships.
The tax police of the tax department, when assembled, can bombard fortresses, line up, shoot and attack the fortress!
There is no comparison between the two!
The powerful control power of the Ministry of Taxation ensured the smooth implementation of the rent-to-purchase order, and then turned a large number of landless and landless peasants in the empire into self-cultivators.
As for the royal family and the government, they didn’t say they were taken advantage of!
It seems that the official and royal family directly gave up more than 30% of the arable land in the empire!
but!
As a ruling body, why does it need so much land? To collect rent?
Isn’t it a shame?
Rather than collecting rent, the empire cares more about making most of the empire's peasants become yeoman farmers rather than tenants.
Those who have permanent property have perseverance, and those who do not have perseverance have no perseverance.
When farmers have land and a foundation to live and work on, they will naturally not mess around. If farmers do not have land, things will not be so stable.
This is something that our ancestors knew, and future generations don’t know it’s impossible. Of course, whether or not to do it after knowing it, and how to do it, is another matter.
As for Li Xuan, he also knew this truth and did it.
The specific measures are very simple, that is, strive to turn all the peasants in the empire into self-cultivators, not tenants.
At the beginning of the establishment of the empire, the proportion of farmers to tenants nationwide was quite large. Although the empire had no way of calculating the specific proportion, according to the agricultural tax data compiled by the Ministry of Taxation, in the eighth year of the Xuanping period, nationwide
There are more than 900 people who bear the agricultural tax, which is less than 10 million.
Of course, these more than nine million people can also be simply considered as more than nine million families.
There is also no accurate figure for the population of the Tang Empire at that time, but it is roughly estimated that there were 150 million people. If a standard small family of five people lived, there would be about 30 million families.
Out of more than 30 million families, only more than 9 million families paid agricultural taxes, which means that the proportion of families paying agricultural taxes is only more than 30%.
And with the strength of the Ministry of Taxation, it is almost impossible for landowners in Dabili not to pay agricultural taxes.
In other words, there were about 20 million households across the country that did not pay agricultural taxes.
It’s not because they evade taxes, it’s because they don’t even own land!
And even among the more than 30% of the population who pay agricultural taxes, there is another characteristic, that is, 10% of the population bear 80% of the agricultural taxes.
Then a very small one percent of the population bears 30% of the agricultural tax.
This series of data all illustrates the unification of the empire, and land annexation is extremely serious!
But now in the twenty-seventh year of Xuanping, the proportion of pure self-cultivators nationwide has reached 50% of the country's farmers. They do not need to rent land from private landlords and only rely on their own
The land can survive.
Fifty percent of this part includes people who rent government land during the rent-to-purchase period. Because the rent of government land is actually equivalent to the agricultural tax, the tenants who rent government land can be considered as
Agricultural taxes have been paid.
Except for 50% of the farmers, the rest are semi-owners, that is, they own a small amount of land, but it is not enough to support themselves, so they have to rent land from landlords.
However, there is no peasant family that does not even have any land, because the government's rent-to-purchase order gives priority to landless farmers. Even if the local government land is not enough, it will be divided relatively evenly.
.
Therefore, although half of the farmers still need to rent land from landlords to survive, they still own land themselves, but the amount of land is not enough to sustain their lives.
Through the rent-to-purchase order, Li Xuan dare not say that he has made enough food for the people of the country, but he can be very proud to say that he has made every peasant family in the country own land. Even if the land is very small, there is some!
Looking through history for five thousand years, Li Xuan can be very proud to say that there has never been an emperor in that dynasty who could do this, only he did it.
Of course, this kind of thing can only be blown out of proportion and cannot be taken seriously. For example, in some areas, the number of official fields and imperial fields is limited but the local population is large.
Finally, in order to ensure that everyone can receive land, the land allocated to each person is very small. In some extreme places, the land that a family of five can receive may only be one or two points of land.
In terms of contemporary grain production per acre, the output is extremely limited. In order to support their families, they must rent a large amount of land from private landowners.
But this is not important. What is important is that the Tang Dynasty newspaper can declare the city openly, and every farmer in the empire can have his own land!