When Li Xuan, who was still personally training troops at Lanjiang Ferry, learned that the first tax law promulgated by the Tang Dynasty had caused great controversy, his face did not look good.
So much so that Yang Xiucai, who went to Lanjiang Ferry to report on tax affairs, looked a little scared when he saw Li Xuan's expression.
Different from Fang Dongquan, who started his career with Li Xuan from the beginning, Fang Dongquan and the others had seen what Li Xuan was like at the earliest, so even though Li Xuan now has greatly increased his power, he truly has control over their life and death.
Although they have great power, Fang Dongquan and Huang Xueren do not have the innermost fear of Li Xuan.
But Yang Xiucai was different. At first, Yang Xiucai was forcibly pulled away by Li Xuan, and the lives of Yang Xiucai's family were even threatened, thus forcing Yang Xiucai, a scholar, to serve the Tang Dynasty.
At that time, Li Xuan had already controlled most of the military power of the Tang Dynasty and became the veritable number one. Therefore, when Yang Xiucai met Li Xuan for the first time, Li Xuan had already left a deep impression on him.
impression.
Now seeing that Li Xuan's face was not very good-looking, he was quite worried that Li Xuan's anger would be directed at him, so he opened his mouth to defend himself: "Reporting to your Majesty, this tax system was determined based on the discussion results of the last imperial meeting.
Yes, I and others did not change the results of the discussion. However, after the promulgation, it caused a polarized debate. I did not do things well. Please forgive me!"
At this time, Li Xuan was still looking at the tax regulations in his hand, and then frowned and said: "Love follows orders, what's the crime?"
Then he continued: "Aiqing just said that the small and medium-sized landowners, rich peasants and poor peasants are more welcome to this tax system. However, the large landowners who own a large amount of land are opposed to it, and the businessmen are also opposed to it, right?"
Yang Xiucai said: "That's true. In our tax system, land tax and various miscellaneous taxes have been unified. In accordance with your majesty's proposal to apportion ding into acres, ding yin has been canceled and ding yin has been integrated into the land acre tax. This
The policy has been welcomed by the majority of farmers and small and medium-sized landowners."
"After all kinds of miscellaneous taxes were abolished, many taxes were merged into the land tax. Although it seems that the land tax has increased than before, people's actual burden has not increased much, and we have adopted a flexible collection policy to
Farmers' land tax is mainly collected from the grain they produce, and money can also be used to directly pledge the grain!"
Li Xuan nodded slightly after hearing this. He abolished all the miscellaneous taxes and dingyin in the Ming Dynasty and merged them into the land tax to become a single tax. This was Li Xuan's firm request.
The core of implementing a unified land tax is not to reduce the burden on farmers, although they do reduce their burden in the process.
But the main reason why Li Xuan did this was to increase tax revenue. Why? Because most of the miscellaneous taxes designated by the Ming Dynasty were actually messy, and they were all pocketed by local governments, and could not be included in the financial system at all.
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At the same time, since all taxes are collected by the tax department, the local administrative agencies of towns and villages have no power to collect taxes. If they want to use money, they can only set aside part of these taxes for local finance, and the remaining part
All is turned over to the national treasury.
This is done to completely put an end to random arrangements by local officials and to evade their financial power.
This prevents local governments from having independent financial powers and thus creating unnecessary years of confrontation with the central government.
If a central government wants to control local governments, it must consolidate its financial and military powers, so as to avoid a situation where local governments are strong and the central government is weak.
Unifying the land tax is a policy that many people are happy to see!
But the next few systems have aroused opposition from many people. The first is the unified tax system for the gentry and gentry. What is the core of this system? It is to cancel the tax exemption rights of people with meritorious status. The tax system of the Ming Dynasty was very strange.
, as long as you have a good reputation, you can be exempted from corvee and other taxes, and when it comes to being promoted or even Jinshi, the amount of tax exemption is astonishingly large.
So much so that a person may have hundreds or even thousands of acres of land under his name!
Naturally, Li Xuan would not let such a thing happen. It was already unbearable for Li Xuan to have a big landowner with thousands of acres of land, but he didn't have to pay taxes on this land? This kind of thing is absolutely intolerable.
"Nowadays, many wealthy families in various towns are taking the lead in resisting our tax system, and many people even say that we treat the gentry harshly!" Yang Xiucai continued.
After hearing this, Li Xuan nodded slightly: "I will deal with these big landowners myself!"
How to deal with it? How else to deal with it. In short, Li Xuan is not interested in talking to these big landowners. He will directly send the new army of the Tang Dynasty to deal with it with swords and guns. If he is convinced, he will ignore it for the time being. If he is not convinced, he will immediately kill people and confiscate their homes.
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He wanted to see whether the new army of the Tang Dynasty was stronger with their swords and guns or their bones!
Now, due to the large-scale expansion of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, the military is still worried that there is not enough land to distribute to these soldiers, so it will just use the land to distribute it by killing a few big landowners!
Yang Xiucai continued: "Those businessmen are also opposed because we want to levy business taxes!"
After hearing this, Li Xuan said: "Just a little business tax, don't they think it's too much? Is it possible to do business without paying tax?"
The commercial tax of the Tang Dynasty was also newly enacted. The commercial tax was more complicated than the land tax, but it was limited to the fact that they only occupied Zhengtai County, which was a small place and not many industries. Moreover, they did not even occupy Zhengtai County because commercial activities were
It is very limited and only revolves around daily consumer goods, such as grain, salt, iron, cloth, etc. It is mainly composed of two parts, one is business tax and the other is customs tax.
Business tax is mainly levied on specific business locations such as shops and merchants. Different amounts of business tax are levied based on different industries and the size of shops.
As for the customs tax, it was also levied on traveling caravans. For this reason, the Tax Department of the Tang Dynasty established eight tax cards for entry and exit from Zhengtai County.
The proportions of these two major commercial taxes are not high. If added together, the tax accounts for about one-tenth of the selling price of the goods, which is often said to be one-tenth of the tax.
If you want to say that this tax per ten is higher, it must be higher than the commercial tax of the Ming Dynasty, because the tax of the Ming Dynasty was only tax per thirty.
However, except for these two types of taxes, the Tang Dynasty did not levy other taxes, and the local authorities did not have the power to collect taxes. This basically eliminated excessive levies and miscellaneous taxes. However, in the Ming Dynasty, there was only a tax of thirty on the surface.
But the actual burden is definitely not small. It’s just that these additional expenditures do not go to the central finance, but to the pockets of local officials.
The business tax is three million taels a year, but businessmen still complain that the burden is too heavy. This is not because the business tax of the Ming Dynasty was too high, but that the additional expenditures were too large.
Judging from the operation of an ordinary businessman, the total business tax of the Tang Dynasty was definitely lower than when they did business on the territory of the Ming Dynasty.
But why are these businessmen still dissatisfied?
The reason is simple. No matter what era or where, businessmen are always full of greed. Most of them will use various methods in order to save costs and increase profits, such as bribing officials, smuggling, etc.
The best example is Old Man Sun, a close partner of the Tang Dynasty!
Now these methods of theirs no longer work, but they have to pay one-tenth of the tax honestly, which they are definitely not willing to do.
Li Xuan didn't even care about this!
For a peasant-based regime, businessmen, especially those who only know how to sell but not produce, are in vain. In Li Xuan's mind, these businessmen who only know how to speculate and sell are not as good as those who only know how to speculate and resell.
How about a big landowner?
He still has some scruples about dealing with those big landowners. As long as those big landowners don't go too far, he won't even try to target these big landowners by using the system of "the more land you have, the more taxes you pay," nor has he introduced any policies to limit land rents.
, but they paid the land tax honestly, so Li Xuan didn't bother to care about them.
But these businessmen dare to resist the implementation of the commercial tax system. They are simply impatient!
He immediately said: "Except the few businessmen who cooperate with us, well, also remove some businessmen who traffic grain, salt, iron and other materials needed by Chint from the outside world, and draw up a list of the others!
"
What to do after getting the list? Naturally, arrest people one by one and search their homes!
Li Xuan had to let them know that I was not only a bandit, but also a bandit now. If I dared to resist, I was simply seeking death!
Li Xuan dared and wanted to do this!
The foundation of the Tang Dynasty does not lie in the big landowners or businessmen, but in the 100,000 ordinary people in Zhengtai County, and 99% of these people are farmers, and the vast majority of these farmers are still poor.
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As long as it gets the support of these poor people, the Tang Dynasty will be able to obtain soldiers and materials to support the war!
As for the other people, they supported the Tang Dynasty no matter what they wanted. Li Xuan raised his hand to welcome them. If they didn't support the Tang Dynasty, as long as they stayed quietly, Li Xuan didn't bother to talk to them.
But if you want to resist the Tang Dynasty, then unfortunately, Li Xuan will give you the treatment of confiscating your family and exterminating your clan!
When Yang Xiucai heard Li Xuan's words, he couldn't help but worry about the big landowners and businessmen. Those people didn't know how ruthless the Tang Dynasty was.
Those people probably thought that since Li Xuan had led the Tang Dynasty out of the mountains and occupied the countryside of Zhengtai County and established a two-level system of towns and villages, this would definitely be formalized and needed their support.
But they will think that the essence of the Tang Dynasty is still a group of bandits!
The bandits will not tell you any truth, let alone take the principles of benevolent government to heart.
When they encounter someone who opposes them, they will use the simplest and most effective way to solve the problem: pointing a knife and gun at you, asking you if you obey, and killing you if you don't obey!