Tax-free.

This is the only way Liu Hong can think of under the existing conditions - the soldiers of the Fanrong border are exempted from agricultural taxes!

Under the imperial examination system in later generations, thousands of scholars have studied hard for decades, is it possible that everyone is rushing to enter and exit the temple and be in a high position?

Not necessarily.

At the peak of the imperial examination system, the number of participants in each scientific examination was nearly hundreds of thousands, how many people could finally enter the court?

In fact, the biggest attraction of the imperial examination system is that it is tax-free - all the people who are promoted and the first, and the acres of land under their names are all tax-free!

As a result, the scholars who participated in the examination had only come to the step of raising people, and before they had even become officials, countless villagers and neighbors were willing to offer their land, asking the people to hang their own land in their names to exempt them from agricultural taxes.

And this situation is obviously what Liu Hong does not want to see - it is the huge 'tax-free class' that grows by thousands every three years that makes the state's fiscal revenue lower and lower in later generations, and the control over the local government is weaker and weaker; in desperation, he can only put the burden of supporting the country on the already poor and weak people.

Therefore, Liu Hong put forward his own idea: all soldiers on the front line of the Great Wall can be exempted from the field tax of 100 acres of land.

One hundred acres of land is the standard for Emperor Liu Bang to distribute land to the people of the world; Now, only 20 years have passed, and the vast majority of families have 100 acres of land.

The tax exemption standard of 100 mu can basically ensure that the vast majority of low-level soldiers will be benefited, and at the same time, it will avoid the situation of 'Fan Jinzhongju', where the people compete to donate land and the local government digs the corners of the country.

It should be mentioned that the agricultural tax at this time was not based on a fixed amount of grain per mu per year, but was paid in a very scientific manner according to the percentage of the harvest - 15 taxes and 1.

When the autumn harvest is approaching, the local county government will send a tax collector: You Hui, with rankless officials and weighing tools, to guard the edge of the field.

At this time, the cultivation of the common people also generally strictly followed the solar terms, when to irrigate, when to harvest, are based on the special 'heavenly people' to estimate the season; in most cases, the autumn harvest of a county or even a county will be on the same day.

On the autumn harvest day, when the people harvest the grain with sickles, the officials brought by the tour will stare wide-eyed, staring at the people to send the crops that still exude the smell of straw to the edge of the field, and weigh them to pay taxes.

No matter what the final harvest is, the tour will divide one-fifteenth of the harvest as an agricultural tax.

Simple and transparent, even if the tax collector uses his hands and feet on the weighing tool, the people can roughly visually determine whether the part taken away by the tour is one-fifteenth of the harvest of their own land.

That is to say, if the yield of a hundred acres of land in someone's name is 300 stones, then he will pay a tax of 20 stones; The harvest is 600 stones, and the agricultural tax is 40 stones.

This kind of 'performance'-like method of paying taxes on a percentage basis made the magistrates very concerned about the land harvest of the people under their rule - for the magistrates, taxation is political performance!

Collecting more taxes means that the harvest of the land under his rule is good, and the magistrates who are not ashamed can also boast of the phrase 'the people live and work in peace and contentment, warm clothes and food, and there is no hunger'.

In addition, higher taxes will also make the government more generous.

At this time, the operating expenses of the local government were not allocated by the central government, but the local government itself withheld the agricultural tax collected from the autumn, and the remaining part was transported to Chang'an and handed over to the state treasury.

As for the standard of interception, according to Liu Bang's 'living within the limits of income', in layman's terms, it means adjusting government expenditure according to revenue.

If there is a lot of tax revenue, then the local government can naturally withhold more of it for the next year's welfare to officials, maintain roads, and even open canals to divert water and increase grain production

Wait.

The tax is small, and the magistrate naturally has no confidence to intercept more, so he can only tighten his belt in the second year, and he does not dare to bring oil and water to eat; As for building roads and opening canals, giving red envelopes to officials under his rule during the New Year's holidays or something, don't even think about it.

Fifteen taxes of one, about six or seven percent, was not too high for the feudal era; But the actual situation is that in history, Emperor Wen halved the agricultural tax rate from 'fifteen taxes and one' to 'thirty taxes and one', and Liu Heng became a living saint in the eyes of the people!

Reduced from 7 percent to 3.5 percent, it doesn't seem like much, it really deserves the people's gratitude to Dade, and even in the later years of Emperor Wu, he still remembers Liu Heng's goodness, so that he is willing to be retracted by the pig master's edict?

If you understand the living conditions of the people at this time, you can find that everything Liu Heng has done is indeed worthy of being called a 'saint in the world' by the people.

At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Liu Bang gave 100 acres of land to every family in the world; Nowadays, the yield per mu of corn, the main crop, is generally about three stones.

In this way, the harvest of a common people's labor for a year is 300 stone of corn.

As for expenditures, even without taking into account the special circumstances, according to the family composition of 'one husband and five people ruling a hundred fields' that was common at this time, each family of five would have to use 120 stone for a year's ration.

It seemed that the people had a hundred and eighty stones left in their hands; But the reality is not so rosy.

Even if you don't take into account the expenses of firewood, rice, oil, salt, clothing, etc., the fluctuation of grain prices alone is enough to make the people cry - after the autumn harvest, the grain grown in the fields will be sold!

The sudden influx of grain into the market will naturally cause food prices to plummet; However, the people, who could not afford to store grain, still had no choice but to accept their fate and sell grain to grain merchants at a price far lower than usual.

When the grain left at the people's homes is eaten and they go to buy rice, the grain will not be the price at which it was sold—in an exaggerated season, the price of grain will even be twice as expensive as the price sold by the people after the autumn harvest!

If we encounter a turbulent and chaotic season like this year, it is very easy for the peasants to be unable to afford to eat the corn they sow and harvest by themselves and sell it to grain merchants.

This is the most helpless thing for the people in the feudal era: the grain is cheap and hurts the peasants, and the grain is expensive and hurts the peasants.

In most cases, the ideal situation of a husband and a family of five and a hundred fields, the farmer is busy for a year, in addition to barely filling his stomach, the last remaining money is likely to be not enough to change new clothes for his wife and children.

At this time, the twenty stone grain that was originally handed over to the government suddenly returned ten stone, what kind of experience is it?

Especially the time point when these ten stones of grain are returned, it happens to be the end of spring and the beginning of summer, when the green and yellow are not harvested?

- Just rushing here, Liu Heng was pinched out of a statue by the people in history, and it is not an exaggeration to bow down in the morning and evening!

This is why Liu Hong's consideration of exempting border soldiers from agricultural taxes comes from this.

Each family is exempt from the field tax of 100 acres of land, according to the yield of 3 stones per mu, and 15 taxes are calculated, that is, 20 stones; 200,000 Rongbian troops, a total of 4 million stone grain.

This part of the agricultural tax exempted is already very close to the annual grain consumption of the border guards - 5 million stones.

But Liu Hong still muttered a little in his heart: How to operate, so that the border soldiers can feel the care from the Son of Heaven on the premise of solving the problem of lack of military rations for the border troops through tax exemption?

- Liu Hong can't do this kind of thing like tax exemption here and suspension of military rations there.

Liu Hongdi's purpose was to reduce the dissatisfaction of border guards with the 'insufficient distribution of military rations' by exempting them from agricultural taxes in their homes.

True, simply reducing the discontent of the border guards will not change the problem of hunger among the border guards; But there is only so much Liu Hong can do now.