When it comes to the tax reform system, the cabinet elders are worried for a while.

These days, the Cabinet has discussed many times, but there is still no feasible policy.

Before Tianwu, the household department was in charge of the national territory, fields, household registration, taxes, salaries and all financial matters, in addition to the household department of the household department, in each province there was also a Qing Officials Division in charge of the province's money and grain, and also took charge of some of the general affairs of other yamen, and the responsibilities were many overlapping, such as the Household Department Zhejiang Qing Officials Division, the Household Department Huguang Qing Officials Division, the Household Department Shaanxi Qing Officials Division, etc.

After Zhu Cihong implemented the division of civil and military rule in the second year of Tianwu, the functions of collecting taxes and issuing salaries were taken out separately and handed over to the chief official of the Ministry of Finance, and the household department was only responsible for the territory, land, household registration and other matters of the country.

After all, Zhang Guowei, the secretary of the household department, has managed taxation and still has certain views on tax reform, so he first expressed his views.

"Three generations of tribute, help, thorough, stop tax land, Wei and Jin have households, the name of the tune, those who have land rent endowment, those who have households out of cloth, there are households outside the field, the early Tang Dynasty rent, Yong, the law of adjustment, there is a land, there is a rent, there is a household, there is a body, there is a Yong, rent out of the valley, Yong out of silk, transfer out of the silk cloth, outside the household has Ding Yin......"

"Yang Yan has become two taxes, there is no one in the middle, the difference between the rich and the poor, although the name of rent, mediocrity, and adjustment is not seen, in fact, it is not mediocre, and it is transferred into rent; Along with the Song Dynasty, it has not been reduced and transferred to the rent, and the money and rice of the Ding body have been restored......"

Zhang Guowei is a learned person in the end, he has read a lot of books, and since the third generation of the Xia and Shang dynasties, he has gradually analyzed the tax reform policies of various dynasties and generations, laid out the facts, reasoned, and made a big truth, and everyone listened to it with relish, but they didn't know what he wanted to express.

Qiu Zhizhong listened to the clouds and couldn't help but say: "Elder Zhang Ge, then according to your meaning, how should the tax reform of our dynasty be carried out in order to completely put an end to the malpractice of the emperor who said that he was drenching and kicking Hu?" ”

"Well....... this"

Zhang Guowei took a sip of tea, moistened his throat and said: "To put an end to the maladministration of drenching and kicking Hu, it is nothing more than local officials taking advantage of loopholes in the tax system to embezzle ink, and the imperial court only needs to uniformly stipulate the specific capacity of Hu, and pay the flat Huding, and do not ...... it."

The method Zhang Guowei said is actually to imitate the silver yuan system to eliminate fire consumption, because the silver yuan is fixed in weight and fineness, which is not necessary to melt the broken silver paid by the people to produce fire consumption.

The capacity of the unified Hu, if the people pay for the grain, one Hu is one, two Hu is two, the grain is not sharp, naturally the officials have no chance to kick Hu, which can be described as simple and rude.

As soon as these words came out, Li Yan of the Ministry of Education stood up and raised objections, he felt that Zhang Guowei's method was a symptom but not a cure.

Because the reason why local officials are pouring out their guns is that there will be losses in the process of transporting grain to warehouses in various places, which cannot be solved by unified weights and measures.

For example, a county needs to collect 10,000 stone of tax grain, which is loaded into sacks from the county warehouse and transported to the provincial or provincial warehouse by carts and horses, and there will inevitably be some losses on the way to the shipment and transportation, and when it comes to weighing, maybe there will only be 9,900 stones.

What about the less 100 stone of grain? There are more than 10,000 catties, do you want the local government to subsidize it itself? ("Research on the Yield of Grain per Mu in China's Past Dynasties" believes that a stone weighed 153.5 catties in the Ming Dynasty, and a catty weighed 594.6 grams in the Ming Dynasty, which is equivalent to 188 catties now)

Obviously, it is impossible, and the magistrate must have tried every means to make up for this piece of food from the people.

The cabinet ministers nodded slightly, all of them felt that this was reasonable, and Honglu Siqing suddenly said: "If the imperial court is allowed to make up for these losses, how much more stone grain will be produced every year?" ”

Mao Xiang was born in the family of a generation of eunuchs, and he has never been to the countryside, nor has he been a magistrate, so he cannot understand the local market.

Li Yan didn't laugh at his ignorance, but just smiled: "That depends on the appetite of the local government, and the loss is reported by them." ”

After thinking about it carefully, Mao Xiang suddenly realized, this is a bottomless pit, when he met an insatiable magistrate, he said that he had lost tens of thousands of catties, and the court could not investigate it carefully.

This place will lose tens of thousands of catties, and there are nearly 2,000 states and counties in the Ming Dynasty, and the annual loss alone is astronomical.

This proposal did not work, and Shen Tingyang, the secretary of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, proposed to learn from Zhang Juzheng's whip law, changing the tax grain to pay silver yuan, and the imperial court would buy grain from the people and store it.

Listening to everyone's discussions, Yang Tinglin listened carefully, he looked at Huang Zongxi, the secretary of the Ministry of Finance, who wanted to speak and stopped, and said, "Huang Butang, come on." ”

Since Cheng Guoxiang died of illness the year before last, Huang Zongxi, who was in his early forties, took over the post of secretary of the Ministry of Finance.

Hearing Lord Shoufu's name, Huang Zongxi stood up and said: "I see that the world's fields are increasing day by day, and the hardships of the people have been raging for a long time. What happens if the tax is set? Therefore, the benefit of the whip is less for a while, and it is harmful for the future generations! ”

Huang Zongxi spoke as slowly as Yang Tinglin, but he did not have Yang Tinglin's momentum that covered the four fields, he first followed the shortcomings of the tax reform system of various dynasties and generations just summarized by Zhang Guowei, the secretary of the household department, and then analyzed the disadvantages of Zhang Juzheng's whip law.

He finally summed up a truth: every tax reform is very fucked, and if it is not changed once, it will lead to further aggravation of taxes and harm future generations!

Yang Tinglin and the others listened thoughtfully, while the chief eunuch was confused, and secretly said What kind of bullshit theory is this?

Qiu Zhi was in the MMP in the center, but he asked with a smile on his face: "What did Elder Ge say?" Our family has heard that Zhang Taiyue (Zhang Juzheng)'s whip method is a move to turn the tide, so that my Ming Dynasty has Wanli Zhongxing, how is it a maladministration? ”

Huang Zongxi said politely: "Taiyue Gong's innovative move has indeed reversed the financial crisis that my great Ming God is lucky and difficult to do, but his disadvantages are also great, especially for the people at the bottom. ”

"How?"

Qiu Zhizhong asked, and then said: "Please ask the elder to be more popular." ”

Huang Zongxi scolded illiteracy in his heart, and said: "At the beginning of my dynasty, taxes were directly levied on grain, cloth and other physical things. ”

Qiu Zhizhong listened carefully to see what flowers he could say.

Huang Zongxi continued: "However, it is very inconvenient for farmers to pay taxes, because farmers need to bring their own grain and other agricultural and sideline products to the market in exchange for silver, and then they can pay. ”

"In this way, the merchant has become a tooth (intermediary) between the taxpayers and tax collectors, who can arbitrarily lower the price of grain in order to obtain high profits, and the peasants exchange a large amount of grain for a little silver!"

Hearing this, Qiu Zhizhong understood no matter how stupid he was.

To put it bluntly, the peasants have to pay taxes in silver after the grain is sold, and they will be exploited by the merchants!

Originally, the peasants were only exploited by the government, but since they switched to silver to pay taxes, they had to be exploited by the merchants, so they suffered even more.

Huang Zongxi concluded: "The land is levied on silver, and the silver is not produced by agricultural production, and the taxpayers increase their burden due to the depreciation of silver, and the people suffer!" ”

He did not say bluntly that part of the economic prosperity of the Wanli Dynasty was just a false appearance, because every tax season, a large number of peasant households went to the market to sell grain, and merchants were busy collecting grain from the market, and the market seemed to be prosperous.

Due to the scarcity of silver in the country at that time, more grain was needed in exchange for a little silver, so the amount of food sent by farmers to the market increased, and the vehicles transporting silver also increased, and the market became more "prosperous".

As everyone knows, the more prosperous the market, the poorer the peasants, and the government and businessmen who ultimately profit!

This truth is clear to many upper-level figures in power, and Zhu Cihong naturally knows it, so in recent years, he has implemented a tax system of "businessmen pay silver, and farmers pay grain".