Nowadays, criminals in the Tang Dynasty can only launder their illegal gains through various channels, and few people dare to spend the stolen money openly.
And all this is not because the patrol police are so awesome, but because the tax investigators are so awesome...
The more such a tax system is, the more people hate it. Otherwise, the tax department would not reform it every few years, purely to calm the anger of the outside world.
Of course, most of the reforms are just changes to the soup without changing the medicine. If a tax agency does something too harshly and is scolded too harshly, it will often be withdrawn and a new agency will be established. But in fact, the people are still the same people.
Still doing the same things.
The Ministry of Taxation has continued to advance amidst decades of ups and downs, despite being scolded by people outside. However, the people within the empire, especially the upper echelons of the empire, maintain a supportive attitude towards the Ministry of Taxation.
Otherwise, the tax department would not be able to survive amidst all the scolding.
Because the Tax Department is a money-making department, the work efficiency of the Tax Department directly determines the empire's revenue budget, and the revenue budget directly determines the expenditure budget.
Whether other agencies have money to spend next year depends on the effectiveness of the tax department's work.
Therefore, although many senior officials in the empire dislike the Tax Department, they will still clearly support the Tax Department in formal occasions.
During the tax reform this time, there was a wave of public opinion from the outside world, saying that the tax department was going to carry out reforms, but it was directly suppressed by Chen Lifu and other civil servants.
The Ministry of Taxation has been restructured. It has no money and is still doing nothing. Chen Lifu is still counting on the Ministry of Taxation to collect more money to fund his great achievements, such as economic integration policies and the National Wealth Plan.
, such as recovering the global territory.
Since Chen Lifu officially submitted a letter last winter to regain the territory around the world, the empire has successively launched a series of actions, among which the recovery of lost territory in Eastern Europe is the most important result.
And the follow-up will definitely continue.
This series of actions requires the support of financial funds. For example, if you want to use the Tatars as thugs to intervene in the war in the Ottoman Kingdom, or if you want to recover the Ottoman Kingdom, you need to give the Tatars weapons and ammunition.
, if we don’t give them weapons and ammunition, how can they fight a war?
Even if the Tatars themselves sell all of them, it is impossible to raise so much military expenditure to support the war year after year!
Similarly, a lot of money has been spent on affairs in the Indian region since last year. The war between the Mughal Kingdom and the Thirty-Six Nations Alliance indirectly cost the empire at least three million Tang Yuan. Otherwise, this would
How could the Thirty-Six Nations Alliance launch a war of such a large scale?
In the ongoing Indian Peninsula War, the empire still needs a steady stream of expenditure funds.
If you want to build a great global cause, you need to spend money. Even if the money is far less than what you can get through war, you still have to spend it.
This requires the empire's strong fiscal revenue as support, so even Chen Lifu actually supports the efficient work of the tax system.
Therefore, the reform of the tax department was only promoted for a while and then became silent, because the upper-level bosses were not willing to reform the tax. If it were reformed, the tax collection intensity would decrease, tax evasion would increase, and the losses would be huge.
It's their own department.
This time around the tax reform, Chen Lifu and other big guys are not focusing on the reform of the tax collection agencies, but on the reform of the tax itself.
Most of the current tax systems in the empire were formulated around the 35th year of Xuanping, which is already twelve years ago. Many details are no longer suitable for the development of the times.
For example, regarding personal income tax, the tax rate set that year was considered relatively acceptable at the time. Low-income groups basically did not have to pay, and those who paid the tax were the middle and upper classes.
However, with the development of the empire's economy, people's incomes increased during the economic development process, and the accompanying inflation caused many low-income people to reach the threshold of paying personal income tax.
This is naturally not possible. In addition to the important goal of increasing fiscal revenue, the empire's personal income tax also plays an important role in curbing wealth differentiation and redistributing social wealth.
Based on the principle of redistributing wealth, imposing personal income tax on low-income groups is putting the cart before the horse.
Therefore, a very important point in this tax reform is to once again raise the threshold for personal income tax.
And this is the one that many people are most concerned about. After all, the empire’s personal income tax system affects many people.
When the empire first entered the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, it had already established personal income tax. In order to promote personal income, the Holy Emperor even deliberately increased the salaries of officials and soldiers by a part, and then used this increased part as personal income tax.
Politics and religion, in the eyes of many people at the time, were simply taking off their pants and farting, and it was unnecessary.
However, after many years of implementation, when the personal income tax was gradually improved and extended to the entire society, the talents of the tax department discovered this benefit. This was a boiling frog model, which reduced people's backlash.
This is also why the empire was able to successfully implement personal income tax.
In addition to the personal income tax rate adjustment that everyone is most concerned about, there is also a tax rate adjustment that many people are concerned about, and that is the agricultural tax adjustment.
In every tax reform, agricultural tax reform is actually the focus, and it is basically aimed at reducing taxes.
With the continuous reduction of agricultural taxes, the share of agricultural taxes now accounts for only 18% of the fiscal revenue. In the early days, agricultural tax revenue accounted for about 50% of the empire's fiscal revenue.
Initially reducing agricultural taxes and reducing the burden on farmers has been the empire's consistent policy for decades.
If nothing unexpected happens this time, the agricultural tax will also be reduced. Of course, it will only reduce the agricultural tax for farmers with little land. As for farmers with large amounts of land, the empire will not treat them as farmers, but as landlords or farmers.
The taxes paid still have to be paid.
In addition, the empire may adjust the scope and amount of some commercial taxes, some of which will be tax reductions, and some will be tax increases. For example, the property tax, which has been implemented in many places for many years, may be fully implemented in this tax reform.
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These tax reforms will greatly affect people from all walks of life in the empire.
But overall, the strategic direction of this tax reform is still very clear, which is to reduce the tax burden on low-income groups and increase the total tax revenue.
These two strategic directions seem a bit contradictory at first glance, but in fact they are not contradictory at all.