"Shaotian's winter expenditure budget was actually prepared at the beginning of the year. It was within the full-year budget. Now it is only slightly adjusted based on the actual situation." Ruan Dacheng spoke very skillfully. The fiscal budget at the beginning of this year was the Prime Minister's.
The decision was made, and there are many participants among the people present in the hall.
Over there, Zhu Yihai was sitting on the dragon chair, looking through a booklet in front of him. It was the financial budget for Shaotian's second year that he had made previously. Now comparing it, he found that there was already a huge deficit. Specifically, it was the budget at the beginning of the year.
, the expenditure is still somewhat conservative.
Of course, the original income was somewhat conservative.
At the beginning, I did not expect that the counterattack situation this year would be so good. Troops were deployed everywhere, and the imperial camp expanded rapidly.
Zhu Yihai glanced at it for a few times, closed the report, and picked up another copy, the fourth quarter budget adjustment plan drafted by Ruan Dacheng, and next year's budget draft.
Generally speaking, the current financial situation is actually quite good, which is a bit surprising. After all, Chongzhen had control over all the provinces in China, even Liaoxi, but he cried about poverty every day, especially in the last few years.
, I have been worrying about the word "money" all day long, and even added the wrong word randomly.
How come there is no shortage of money in the hands of Zhu Yihai? The situation is still very good?
In the final analysis, it means setting up a new stove and reallocating resources.
Based on the soldiers in his hands and the time-honored brand name of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yihai, the emperor, stood up during the chaos of Hongguang's collapse and represented the old gentry, landlord and bureaucratic class very well.
And he did not follow the wrong path of the Southern Ming Dynasties such as Hongguang, Longwu, Yongli, etc. He did not have the support of scholar-bureaucrats and military leaders. Instead, he just pulled out his own troops and carved out territory, bit by bit from the bottom up.
Start the stove.
On his left hand were the Imperial Guards, who were the meritorious guards of the new dynasty, and on the other hand were the recruited gentry, bureaucrats and landlords. The balance between the two completely changed the situation in which the court had been completely ignored by the scholar-bureaucrats since the late Ming Dynasty.
Especially under the huge external threats, there is a basic soil environment for internal integration and even cooperation.
Therefore, Wanli sent eunuchs to various places to collect mining taxes, which caused uproar, and they were besieged by the crowd. Longqing opened the sea, and it went on for many years.
After Wanli, local governments were in arrears every year, and the imperial government was in financial deficit every year. Chongzhen wanted to raise some money per mu, but the result was that the landless peasants turned against them.
In the final analysis, even for these emperors of the Ming Dynasty, it is actually difficult for the imperial edict to leave Beijing.
No matter how good your idea is, if it goes against the interests of the entire ruling class, then this good sutra will be read incorrectly.
Power is a very complex thing.
Imperial power relied on the execution of the bureaucracy, and most of the bureaucracies came from the scholar-bureaucrats and landlords. When the emperor's policies harmed the interests of these scholar-bureaucrats and landlords, things would not get done.
Zhu Yihai was able to succeed because, to put it bluntly, he restructured the other pole of power, which was the emperor's imperial army. This was a different group from the scholar-bureaucrats and landlords, and it was not even the guard and frontier army system since the late Ming Dynasty.
This group was composed of young and passionate scholars, loyal peasants and craftsmen, and even hungry refugees. Under the leadership of the emperor, they used their lives, blood, and knives to find a way out, and the emperor did not treat them like before.
The emperor trampled the guards like that.
This is a rapidly rising Wuxun group.
In the final analysis, it is actually similar to the Eight Banners of the Tatars.
It is precisely after the emergence of such a new force that is completely loyal to itself in politics that it can suppress the old gentry-landlord-bureaucratic group and regain its right to speak.
And since this imperial camp was set up by the emperor, there is no need to worry about Zuo Liangyu from Huguang in the four towns of Jiangbei in Hongguang, the Zheng family in Fujian during the Longwu Shaowu brothers, or the Xiying and Dongxun two parties in the Yongli period.
A hijacking occurred.
Of course, in addition to clearing up these external conditions, the important thing is that Zhu Yihai is not a player in this era.
He is a time traveler. His biggest advantage is not his previous identity, but his understanding of this period of history more thoroughly than anyone in this era. This is the result of hundreds of years of research by future generations. Every corner has been covered.
Researched thoroughly.
Chongzhen was a young emperor who grew up in the palace. No matter how elite his education was, he could not escape the constraints of the times. Not to mention Hongguang, Longwu, Yongli, etc., even Zheng Zhilong, Zheng Chenggong, Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo, etc.
Same.
Others are groping forward in the fog, and no one knows where the road ahead is.
The road ahead has twists and turns, may take detours, or even fall off a cliff, but Zhu Yihai just needs to follow the road that he has long known.
At this time, most of the ministers participating in the court discussion were Zhu Yihai's confidants. Regardless of whether they were eunuchs, Donglin, Fushe, traitors, southeastern pirates Zheng, or others, now they are all Zhu Yihai's confidants.
Take him under his wing.
Ruan Dacheng does things neatly.
I directly reported the specific figures to everyone, because the situation this year is very good, many places have been quickly recovered, and the areas south of the Yangtze River have basically been stabilized. In addition, many places in the Jiangbei area have also been recaptured.
And Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Jiangnan are all important areas for money and food. Jiangnan was in chaos last year, but it had a good foundation. Once it stabilized, it quickly recovered. There were no major disasters in Jiangnan this year, so after the summer harvest, it was largely stable, and the autumn harvest was about to be bumper again.
, food prices in various places have fallen sharply again.
Although wars are still going on in various places, like Sichuan and Guizhou, although the army is fighting, the control is constantly strengthening. The implementation of the new tax law has achieved many obvious benefits.
"According to the statistics reported in newspapers from various places, this year's second year of Shaotian, the annual revenue will be 30 million taels of silver only paid to the treasury of the Ministry of Household Affairs, and there will also be 4.73 million taels of rice, wheat and beans.
, 4.92 million bunches of grass, 500,000 grates of tea (ten pounds per grate). In addition, the salt tax revenue reached 8.86 million taels, the customs duty revenue reached 1.35 million taels, and the tax revenue reached 300 taels.
Five hundred thousand taels, plus miscellaneous tax income of 680,000 taels..."
This number is very astonishing. Specific administrative offices such as the Prime Minister's Office, the Cabinet, and the Six Ministries have already known these figures. However, it is the first time for the censors and officials in the administrative offices such as the Admonition Yuan and the Procuratorate to come into contact with such numbers.
The specific numbers are quite shocking.
Some people even directly suspected that there was something wrong with these numbers.
Some people directly believed that this fully proved that the imperial court was levying excessive taxes and plundering people's wealth.
We must know that the best years of the Chongzhen Dynasty were actually the year when Chongzhen just succeeded to the throne. At that time, the number of official and private land in the Ming Dynasty was more than 740 million acres.
The household registration was more than 9.83 million, and the population was more than 51 million. These numbers are strikingly similar to those at the beginning of Emperor Yang's succession to the throne.
Then that year, 4.3 million shi of wheat, 21.49 million shi of grain, and a million taels of gold, flower, and silver were collected, plus other miscellaneous hundreds of thousands of taels such as salt, tea, and money.
This was the best year, and then it got worse and worse later on, with all kinds of arrears and deficits, especially the rebellion of chieftains, the rebellion of refugees, the invasion of Hou Jin from outside, and even the Mongols causing trouble.
Therefore, the only option was to increase the rates. Not only did the previous Liao rates continue to be levied, but later there was even a practice rate and a reduction of rates. Even if all three rates were added up and levied together, in fact, not much was collected, and the debt was still serious.
But even the millions of taxes collected each year caused people everywhere to rebel.
Now the imperial court occupies half of the country, and the imperial court has never increased taxes, and even reduced taxes in many places. How come it was able to collect 30 million taels of silver this year, and nearly 15 million taels of various other silver taels, and nearly 5 million taels of grain?
Millions of stones?
This is too much!
I always feel like something is wrong.
Many censors are good with their mouths and pens, but when it comes to specific financial and tax figures, they are actually not good at it.
Of course, Ruan Dacheng's report is quite concise, but the data is also clear.
For example, if you compare the wealth of the Chongzhen Dynasty with that of the Shaotian Dynasty, you will find that in addition to the land tax and dingyin, the rest of the Chongzhen Dynasty is the gold flowers and silver offset by the land tax in the south of the Yangtze River, and then some miscellaneous items.
There were basically no industrial and commercial taxes in the Chongzhen Dynasty. What could be counted as commercial taxes was just a little bit of pawn shop money among miscellaneous items, and then there was not much tax on banknotes.
As for the salt tax and tea tax, which should have accounted for the majority, the tariffs are very small.
Even the industrial, commercial and municipal taxes and deed taxes were non-existent. In fact, they existed in the early Ming Dynasty, and the tax rates were very low, but they basically disappeared during the Chongzhen period.
Even if Wei Zhongxian levied taxes in the Tianqi Dynasty, what he levied was not industrial and commercial taxes, but miscellaneous items, and the amount was very small.
When the three rates were levied, it was only levied on a per-acre basis, and no other vendors or shops were levied.
Even big things like mining taxes are basically non-existent.
The first 30 million taels of the Shao Tian Dynasty's income were basically land tax, land titles, and land deeds, as well as the royal court's sales of military farmland, official land, and government land rent income. Because of the income from stalls,
Mu, the grain paid by the officials and gentry only accounts for half of the country now, but the land has been re-quantified, and the land tax and landowners can basically collect it as expected, so it is very impressive. Even if part of the land tax is temporarily reduced, they still receive a lot.
Especially in recent years, when food prices have been high, the amount of money received after deducting money has of course increased a lot.
The industrial and commercial tax, mining tax, salt and tea tax, customs duties, and even non-existent lijin, etc., which accounted for a small proportion of the Chongzhen Dynasty, generated fifteen million taels of revenue for the Shao Tian Dynasty.
This is an astonishing number.
This does not include another income, which is the income from the royal estates run by the royal family, those royal shops, farms, caravans, trade, etc., as well as the income from government-run workshops.
Because these profits were not put into the treasury of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, but were put into the two treasury, Ruan Dacheng did not say that it was actually a large sum of money.
In addition, since the beginning of the war, the property confiscated by the traitors who surrendered, and the property such as the official land and official shops that were taken over have all entered the emperor's inner treasury.
This is actually a large amount of money. Of course, the emperor will also take money from his imperial palace and inner treasury to reward officials and people, provide relief to the people, and even supply the army.
Anyway, the emperor's treasury is quite rich.
As the Chongzhen Dynasty progressed, it became more difficult to collect taxes. It is said that the actual collection rate was only a little over 30%, so the situation became worse and worse and life became more and more difficult. Even in the best year of Chongzhen's first year, Liao's taxes were actually only collected
It reached 4.8 million taels, but the next year only more than 2 million taels were collected.
Therefore, the Chongzhen Dynasty, in fact, most of the time, the actual tax money collected in a year was only about 20,000 shi of grain, plus a few million taels of silver.
But now, Shao Tianchao actually earns 45 million taels of silver a year, plus 45 million dan of various grains.
Even though the Shao Tian Dynasty confiscated most of the grain in exchange for silver and only retained a few million stone grain, the figures were still scary.
How many years were the two dynasties apart?
Why is the gap so big?
How can we use half of the land before collecting double the tax?
Ruan Dacheng gave a brief explanation. First of all, of course, the fields were re-cleared and the taxed acres were unified. Most of the unclear problems in the yellow books in the past were sorted out. Then, after the officials and gentry paid the grain to the farmers in the acres, the actual
Landowners and gentry are the main taxpayers, and there are fewer cases of underpayment, and tax exemptions and exemptions have also been blocked.
In addition, many new tax sources were added. The largest tax source was the old guard posts and military camps. The imperial court cut off all the past guard posts and took back all the military camp fields. There was no need to fill in the guard posts anymore.
If you are short of grain, you can still use the large amounts of released land to sell, rent, and collect taxes and rents to expand your income. The difference between the inside and the outside is several times.
Another thing that was not mentioned directly is that during this turmoil, many surrendered traitors, corrupt officials, and evil businessmen were captured, and many desolate fields, terra nullius, etc. were even recovered.
Dr. Zuo Jianyi waited for Ruan Dacheng to finish his report, and then asked first, "Since the financial revenue is so good this year, there should be no problem with expenditures. Why did Ruan Shangshu say that expenditures were insufficient before?"
"Don't worry, Dean Hong. Next, I will talk about the specific situation of expenditures. Among all expenditures, the largest item is military expenditures, which includes military pay, ordnance, military rations, as well as military expenditures for wars, building cities and forts.
, building military depots, as well as rewards, pensions and other major items!"
"At present, our Ming army is mainly divided into two parts: the imperial camp and the local provincial town camp troops. The imperial camp is divided into the imperial camp armies in Beiya and the Beijing camp armies in Nanya.
According to the latest establishment, the imperial camp now has a total of 21 towns of the three armies, as well as four military camps of Huguang, Fujian, Shaanxi-Gansu, and Yunnan-Guizhou. According to the plan, these 21 towns, plus the four external battalions, are all required to complete eight
With the full quota of one thousand combat soldiers, each town would have eight thousand combat soldiers and three thousand auxiliary soldiers.
Nanya Jingying Camp will also complete the full quota of 8,000 soldiers in each of the three towns.
In addition, the imperial court plans to build three more camps in Jiangxi, Guangxi, and Yunnan starting this autumn, each with 8,000 troops."
"Each province must complete the reorganization of two towns in each province, each worth 5,000."
There are many imperial censors and officials there who are already silently calculating how many soldiers there are in the imperial court now.
First of all, the three armies of the Beijing camp have 24,000 combat troops and 9,000 auxiliary troops, which adds up to 33,000.
According to the current standards for raising an army, an average soldier needs to be paid at least 50 taels of silver per year. Not counting other things, the military salary alone will cost 1.5 million taels per year for the three armies of the Beijing Camp.
.
As for the three armies of the imperial camp headquarters, there are currently 21 towns, with 168,000 combat troops and 60,000 auxiliary troops. This adds up to 220,000, and the military salary is 11 million taels a year.
There are still four camps left, and military pay is another 2.2 million.
The twenty-eight towns of Yuyingjingying are equivalent to 15 million taels of silver, which is only military pay, not counting pensions, rewards, ordnance, food, and other expenses. Under normal circumstances, military pay during such a long war period is at most
It accounts for one-third, so if you triple it, you get 45 million taels of silver.
It’s too late to count at this point.
Forty-five million taels of silver, the emperor wants to set up three more camps and add more than 30,000 troops.
And this does not include the local provincial and town camps, Liaodong, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Huguang, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Gansu. Now the imperial court actually controls about ten
four provinces.
With one province and two towns, there will be 28 towns and 280,000 soldiers.
Liu Zongzhou, the censor of Zuodu, couldn't help but stand up.
"Your Majesty, if you expand the army and increase the pay, even if the court doubles the taxes and taxes, I'm afraid it won't be able to sustain it. I request that the army be reduced and the pay reduced!"
