Therefore, the approach taken by the tax department is to combine taxes and fees. Taxes still have to be paid, but they turn a blind eye. As long as you pay some taxes casually, the tax department will ignore you, but this fee cannot be avoided.
For example, various management fees and special fees are all fixed amounts, and merchants must pay them. If they do not pay, they will be blocked to make up for the tax losses.
but!
Even though the tax department has done a lot of work, the results are still not great.
What's more, for a huge empire whose annual fiscal revenue has exceeded 400 million Tang Yuan, although the taxes paid by ordinary small traders are quite a lot, they are actually not that much.
Datang's main tax revenue mainly comes from officially registered and operated enterprises, because the accounts between enterprises must be kept in bank accounts. The accounts are not public. Outsiders do not know how much the company earns and loses.
, but other people or institutions don’t know.
But it is clear at a glance that the Tax Department has the privilege of accessing all kinds of accounts in almost all financial institutions such as banks and funds throughout the empire.
Corporate taxation, including income tax, value-added tax and other taxes, was expected to reach 200 million in the 38th year of Xuanping. This is a quite astonishing figure, accounting for 50% of all tax revenue.
.
And this does not include customs duties and ordinary self-employed business taxes.
If tariffs and various industrial and commercial taxes are included, then the tax revenue contributed by the entire industrial and commercial industry (excluding personal income tax and other personal taxes), that is, the primary industry and the secondary industry, probably accounts for
Seventy percent.
As for the agricultural tax, it is only 20%, and the total amount is only 80 million.
Datang's agricultural tax has not increased over the years. On the contrary, it has declined. At its peak in the early years, the agricultural tax once reached 100 million, but now it has been reduced to 80 million.
Then various special taxes, such as tobacco and alcohol taxes, salt taxes and other special taxes, there are tens of millions in them, but most of them, salt and tobacco, enter the state treasury in a profit-making way or are invested in re-operation.
, so strictly speaking it is not included in the tax category.
The last item is personal tax, including personal income tax, incidental income tax, etc., but the total of this item is only a few million.
The Ministry of Taxation is quite dissatisfied with this. They believe that the current tax system of the Tang Empire, especially the tax system on industry and commerce, has reached its limit.
At least with the existing statistics, communications, and tax costs, it is already difficult for the tax department to tap into tax revenue within the industrial and commercial system.
For example, everyone knows that cracking down on cash transactions can significantly increase taxes, but if you crack down on one, show me, even in the Tang Dynasty, it is already common for people to use checks.
Checks are generally used for transactions between businesses and relatively large transactions between individuals.
However, private use of checks is only limited to the middle and upper classes. If you don’t have a certain amount of deposits in your bank account, the bank will not give you a checkbook.
This also means that in fact, the vast majority of individuals still do not have a checkbook. Whether they make money or spend money, they use cash.
The existing tax system, especially since taxes on enterprises and self-employed individuals are difficult to increase on a large scale, the tax department has to turn its attention to other places.
For example, let’s say this person’s taxes.
At first they were quite ruthless and wanted to impose an inheritance tax, and it was a very large amount, starting at 50%.
But this hasn't been done yet. Just a little bit of rumblings have already caused a violent backlash.
The starting point of inheritance tax is naturally to balance social wealth, curb the continued concentration of wealth, and smooth the polarization of wealth.
but!
No matter when, those who have the right to speak are the powerful class who control a large amount of social resources. They clearly understand the use and harm of inheritance tax, so when they hear the news of inheritance tax leakage, they all agree.
They launched a direct attack and directly forced the Ministry of Taxation's estate tax plan to death, and many of them were officials within the Ministry of Taxation.
In fact, the outside world doesn’t even know that the tax department has tried to introduce inheritance tax!
Even if you know it, there is a high probability that the inheritance tax will not be passed.
Because the group that occupies public opinion, that is, the upper class group, will not support it, and no one is willing to hand over half of their huge wealth to the national treasury. Even if tax can be avoided, tax avoidance is also risky. It is better to strangle it at the source from the beginning.
.
People in the lower class follow what everyone else says, and they believe whatever the middle and upper classes say.
For example, for inheritance tax, there must be a tax exemption limit, but if someone says "warm water to boil a frog", the tax department will be hard-pressed to argue!
There is a tax exemption limit now, but what about next year, what about the year after, what about fifty years from now, what about one hundred years from now?
Therefore, the issue of inheritance tax is not a question of the tax rate or the amount of tax exemption, but a question of the unwillingness of most of the upper class to open this hole.
Therefore, it is difficult to obtain the general support of Datang society!
But what is very interesting is the middle class group here.
On the one hand, they are happy to see the rich pay inheritance tax, but the latter point is the most important, that is, they absolutely do not want to pay inheritance tax themselves.
To put it bluntly, I just want the benefits and don’t want to pay anything.
Therefore, the middle class is the social group that loves to dream during the day!
Therefore, even if the inheritance tax is implemented, only the ordinary middle class or even the bottom class will be levied in the end. As for the real rich and powerful, they have a lot of legal and reasonable ways to avoid it.
The most profitable lawyers in Datang are not criminal lawyers, but tax lawyers.
Naturally, these tax lawyers can make so much money because they can help their employers avoid paying more taxes.
But ordinary people cannot do this. Legal tax avoidance is very difficult and costly, and ordinary people cannot do it.
However, in this way, the rich and powerful can continue to live freely, and the lower class may also avoid being levied inheritance tax due to a certain amount of tax exemption.
But the middle class is in trouble, as they cannot evade taxes or obtain tax exemptions.
They have worked hard all their lives, regardless of whether they make money legally or illegally, but after they die, their heirs who want to inherit their inheritance must pay an inheritance tax of more than 50%!
When I die and leave money to my son, my mother still has to pay taxes?
Also, it’s okay for us ordinary people to pay, but why can those rich people use various methods to avoid inheritance?