Chapter eight hundred and forty-eight Chen Lifu with a bright future
In Songjiang Prefecture, in an elegant teahouse, several gentry were talking loudly, and the things and people they were talking about were tax inspector Chen Lifu who had just arrived in Shanghai and some recent changes in the tax agency.
"I heard that when Chen Lifu inspected the Ningguo Mansion, he killed no less than twenty people. Even the Song family of Ningguo was persecuted. Now that he has come to our Songjiang, we don't know how much bloodshed he will cause!"
"Yes, our family has had a lot of business dealings with the Song family of Ningguo before. I don't know the other members of the Song family, but I know the young master of the Song family. He is a decent man and has quite a literary reputation. But this
But I was also persecuted once. I heard that I was sentenced to death by execution. I didn’t even give outsiders a chance to save me. I was sentenced to death on the same day. It’s really shocking!”
"Alas, these are troubled times, and the life of the gentlemen like us is getting more and more difficult!"
"Isn't that right? The imperial court started to use troops against Jiangbei this autumn, using no less than 100,000 troops and requisitioning more than 100,000 civilians. I heard that the war expenses for the first month alone reached millions of taels. This is all a result of the people's support.
Ah, the imperial court spent a lot of money fighting the war, but in the end it was not us common people who suffered!"
"Yes, people are suffering when things go up, people are suffering when people die, the world is difficult!"
"If it weren't for the imperial court spending so much money on war, why would the tax hawks keep an eye on us every day? Last month, one of my supervisors was just slightly negligent and missed a mere few hundred taels of business tax. In a few days, those
The tax hawk came to our door and told us that we had evaded taxes and asked us to make up for the missed taxes. However, they also issued a fine of 10,000 taels to our business. It was really too much!
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"That is, when the autumn tax was collected, our family obviously only had less than a hundred acres of land, but they also included the land donated by the same people and fellow villagers. In the end, they collected 3,000 acres of agricultural tax from our family.
, so angry that our old man couldn’t eat for three days!”
“Today’s tax policy is really too harsh!”
While these gentry were discussing loudly, at a table separated by a screen, a young man was using a charcoal pen to write down the remarks of these people on paper, especially some of the industries they discussed, the number of acres of land, etc.
, and these are all evidence that the tax bureau will tax them later.
While remembering this, the young man also sneered at their words: "Only a few hundred taels of business tax were missed? It was obviously an undercount of two thousand taels, and the accounts were deliberately falsified. When the tax official came to visit,
They denied it in every possible way, and finally they admitted obediently when the tax inspection team came. However, when the tax inspection team came, it was not just as simple as making up for the tax evasion.
The tax inspection team never has the habit of returning empty-handed. Paying back taxes is just the most basic thing, and you can't get away with a fine. Nowadays, the tax department imposes severe penalties on those who evade taxes.
If the tax officer comes to remind you to pay, then there is nothing. But if the matter is serious enough to dispatch a tax inspection team, then the process is basically the same. If you have a good attitude, you will only be fined. Of course, the fine is quite a lot. Five
Fines of times or ten times are very common. If you have a bad attitude or even refuse to admit it, you may violently resist the tax, arrest people, be sentenced, have your home raided, be exiled, etc.
There will be different sentencing plans depending on the seriousness of the situation.
But even so, the problem of tax evasion and tax evasion in various places is still quite serious. Many people take a chance and evade taxes if they can. If they are discovered, they will make up for it in the worst case.
Because they will make up for the tax afterwards, the tax department can't push people too hard. They can just confiscate homes and exterminate people, without even arresting people. Otherwise, the impact will be too great, but it is not feasible to let this situation go.
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The Ministry of Taxation has already begun to prepare relevant measures on this issue, and is also preparing to work with the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Commerce and other cabinet agencies to curb tax evasion.
Merchants who have engaged in tax evasion will be directly included in the list of untrustworthy persons, which will be directly published in the Tang Dynasty Daily. Merchants these days rely on their reputation to do business. Once they are untrustworthy, it will have a great impact on their business.
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At the same time, other restrictions will be imposed on such merchants. For example, Royal Bank will terminate its loan business and collect the money that has been released in advance.
Finally, the Ministry of Taxation is still discussing with the Ministry of Justice to formulate a more detailed punishment regulation specifically targeting tax evasion, tax resistance and other criminal acts, and then strengthen the control. For example, if tax evasion is tax evasion, not only
If you pay back, you will not only be fined, but you will also have to go to jail. In short, the cost of crime cannot be made too low.
Of course, if it's just ordinary tax evasion, don't just confiscate the family and exterminate the family as in the past.
In the past, the Tang Dynasty would confiscate families and exterminate families at every turn. This was because in its rise stage, the tax system needed to be forcibly promoted. There were too many people who opposed it. There were endless armed resistance to taxation. At that time, strong measures were needed to implement it.
But now, under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, even though the gentry yelled and cursed, they still honestly accepted the tax policy of the Tang Dynasty. They just liked to evade taxes, so during this period, there were few violent tax resistances.
Yes, but there are too many tax evasion cases.
At this time, a more comprehensive, slightly mild, and deterrent punishment method is needed to replace the previous confiscation of homes and genocide.
Of course, this situation only applies to ordinary tax evasion. If the circumstances are particularly egregious, such as huge amounts of money, violent tax resistance, etc., it is still inevitable to confiscate the family and exterminate the family.
Most of the people Chen Lifu killed in Ningguo Mansion, Dezhou Mansion, and Chizhou Mansion were these two.
After Chen Lifu arrived in Songjiang Prefecture, he discovered that Songjiang Prefecture, a tax-heavy town, also had many problems. Although the overall tax evasion rate was not too high, after Songjiang Prefecture opened its port, its tax revenue was huge, even if it was tax evasion.
The proportion is smaller, but the total amount is extremely huge.
The Ministry of Taxation estimates that in the five years of Xuanping, Songjiang Prefecture has evaded at least one million taels of tax, especially in the newly established business zone, where the problem of tax evasion is particularly serious.
The main subjects of Songjiang Prefecture's business district are naturally the gentry from the original Jiangnan area. After all, only the gentry had the funds to engage in industry and commerce, and the local gentry had the advantage of a convenient location.
However, the gentry in the Jiangnan area did not pay taxes or only paid very small taxes during the Ming Dynasty. Now that they have changed to the Tang Dynasty, the tax amount is naturally unacceptable to them.
The gentry in the Jiangnan area are different from other areas. In other areas, there was often a period of frequent armed tax resistance at the beginning. The landlords and gentry entangled their servants and tenants in violent confrontations, and even killed tax collectors. There are countless incidents involving officials, and there are even examples of rebellions involving hundreds or even thousands of people.
Then the local tax inspection team often cooperates with the local army and militia organizations to carry out forcible suppression.
And after killing them once, they usually become honest!
However, in the Jiangnan area, there are very few armed anti-tax rebellions, and the scale is generally small. So far, the local garrison has not suppressed large-scale armed anti-tax rebellions, because this kind of thing has never happened, and there have been a few small ones occasionally. If the problem is large-scale, the local tax inspection team will usually settle it down by itself.
But here comes the problem!
They dare not resist armed resistance, but they always find ways to evade taxes!
Tax evasion, these four words seem to be deeply rooted in their bones!
This kind of method is extremely unaccustomed to the tax department!
The officials of the Tax Department were already used to the rhythm of violent resistance to taxes, strong suppression, and honest payment of taxes. The gentry in Jiangnan suddenly broke their rhythm.
The secretive ways of the Jiangnan gentry made the tax officials helpless!
Otherwise, the Ministry of Taxation would not have sent tax inspectors to almost every state capital, and promoted Chen Lifu, who was an effective tax inspector, to several places, and then sent them to many places. To put it bluntly, the tax situation in Jiangnan has been It was beyond the expectations of the tax officials, and they were a little helpless.
The appearance of Chen Lifu gave the senior officials of the tax department a hope of rectifying taxation in Jiangnan. Now that he was sent to Songjiang, the expectations were even higher.
If Chen Lifu can do a good job in taxation work in Songjiang Prefecture, his future will be bright, and it will not take long to be promoted to deputy director of the Inspection Division.
And this is a position of the fifth rank. When dispatched to local areas, they are often the core officials who inspect the taxation of a province.
Among the many high-level and fifth-rank positions in the Tang Dynasty, there were not many that could be compared with the Deputy Director of the Inspection Division of the Grain Collection Department of the Ministry of Taxation, which inspected the taxation of various provinces.
His authority is so heavy that even the governor of a province is not willing to offend him easily.
This is because such officials specially assigned by the central government are almost always synonymous with low status and high power. The rank of such officials is generally not too high, but they have great real power.
But having said that, the officials of the tax department have great real power. Chen Lifu's immediate boss, the director of the inspection department, is only a fourth-grade position. When placed locally, he is just a prefect of a lower-level prefecture. But in Central government, but he inspects taxation across the country.
In the higher-up Grain Collection Department, although this organization was only a department-level organization and its chief officer was only a third-rank subordinate, it was the core organization of the Tang Dynasty and was in charge of the national tax inspection team and tax inspection work.
Its power is greater than that of the Agricultural Tax Department, Customs Department, Specialized Department responsible for the taxation of salt, tea and other special commodities, and the Industrial and Commercial Department in the Ministry of Taxation.
Chen Lifu works in the Inspection Office under the Grain Recruitment Department, and is valued by his superiors for his outstanding work. Even the Minister and Minister have heard of his name. He must have a bright future!