There are 2,200 acres of land under his name, and only 100 acres of them are in the Yellow Book and need to be taxed, which should of course be a good thing, but Gao Pragmatic felt that his situation suddenly became embarrassing.

According to his thinking, any property in the world should be taxed unless it is exempt from tax by law, such as temporarily exempt in order to promote the development of a certain industry. Taxation, in his view, should not be seen as exploitation, because it is the necessary basis on which the state needs to function normally and to regulate the macroeconomy.

Taxation should and must be taken from the people and used for the people. In fact, the ancients did not have such a way of thinking, but in practice, they always deviated.

More than 2,000 acres of land is not a small industry, put it outside, this alone can squeeze into the threshold of big landlords, but although Gao Pragmatic also intends to collect wealth for himself, he does not want to "evade taxes".

According to Zhang Jin's next brief introduction, more than 2,000 acres of land, all averaged, the yield per mu of land is not high, but in fact, in North China at this time, it is not very low, about 200 catties, these 2,000 acres of land in hand, which is equivalent to 200,000 catties of grain per year.

Since the yield per mu in the north is lower than in the south, the tax standard in the vicinity of Gyeonggi is actually quite low. In particular, because the Gyeonggi region was densely populated and grain production was not high, the imperial court did not enforce a whip law here in order to ensure the food supply of the Gyeonggi region, but continued to collect taxes in kind. This tax in kind is very low, and the average tax rate is only about one-fortieth of the output on the surface. Even if it is 200,000 catties, in fact, the tax in kind payable is only 5,000 catties of grain per year.

In later generations, the flour (flour) rate of wheat was very high, but the flour yield of wheat during the Ming Dynasty was relatively low, and it was good to have 60 percent of the flour yield, so if the 5,000 catties of wheat were replaced with flour, it was only about 3,000 catties.

What is the price of flour, Gao Pragmatic had calculated it when he got the first Zhang's money, and the price of a hundred catties of flour was only one or two pieces of silver and three thousand catties of flour...... But it is equivalent to paying a tax of thirty taels of silver.

Yes, only thirty taels of silver.

What is the concept of thirty taels of silver?

Gao Shishi's uncle Zhang Siwei was worried that his nephew would lose face when he came to his own courtyard as the master for the first time, and he would lose face when he saw that his subordinates couldn't even get a reward, so he directly gave him 5,000 taels!

That's five thousand taels!

If these 5,000 taels of silver are used to pay taxes on Sanshen Garden and its properties, even if there is not a single acre of hidden land, and the tax payable is paid in full, it will be paid continuously for 166 years!

The Ming Dynasty has been raising scholars for two hundred years, but the scholars are not even willing to pay such a tax honestly. Thinking of this, Gao Pragmatic really felt sad for the Ming Dynasty in his heart.

In later generations, because of the influence of "Fan Jinzhongju" in "The Outer History of Confucianism", there is a point of view that in the Ming Dynasty, all people who raised more than one person were exempt from taxes, but in fact, this is not right, not so exaggerated - at least in the Wanli period.

In fact, Daming has a little bottom line of principles, and it has a relatively clear amount of tax-free fields.

For example, Jinshi can have 2,000 mu of tax-free land, while the tax-free land quota for lifters is 400 mu, and for Xiucai, the tax-free field is 80 mu.

This data is already known to Gao Pragmatic as soon as he is "sensible" in this life. So he once had a very rough calculation.

The imperial examination in the Ming Dynasty was held every three years, and about 300 people were admitted each time. On average, almost 100 people are admitted every year, and if it is assumed that all people can live for 25 years after being a jinshi, then in the Ming Dynasty, there will be 2,500 living jinshi in the whole country - this is probably the number of officials above the seventh grade in the country, of course, only civil officials.

The situation is a little more complicated, with larger provinces such as Nanzhili admitting 120 to 130 students per subject, and smaller provinces, such as Jiangxi Province, admitting 90 students a year. There are thirteen provinces in the Ming Dynasty, and there are about 1,300 people in each subject. Count a little more, count 1,500 people, then on average, there are 500 lifters per year, if you live an average of 30 years after the lift, then the Ming Dynasty will usually have 15,000 people alive.

As for the number of Xiucai, it is difficult to estimate, but usually there are 2,000 people in each township examination, considering that some of them should not be qualified to participate in the township examination, then on average there should be 5,000 people in a province. There are about 70,000 people in the thirteen provinces, including the rest of the country.

Of course, this estimate is only a very general estimate made by a highly pragmatic individual, and the accuracy is certainly not much higher, but it is more or less a reference value.

Then, according to this value, the tax-free fields of Jinshi in the country are about 5 million mu; The tax-free land for people is about 6 million acres; Xiucai's tax-free fields are not even 6 million mu, but about 5.6 million mu.

How much is the total number of tax-free fields in the country? Five million plus six million, plus 5.6 million, the total is only 16.6 million mu.

How much arable land was there in the Ming Dynasty? At least 900 million acres.

The gentry who were exempt from tax because of their education accounted for 16,600,000 mu, or 54 of the total arable land in the country.

Is this a high percentage? It is obviously not high, because according to this data, if the gentry did not deliberately evade taxes, this bit of land would not actually pose a serious impact on the economic foundation of the Ming court. This is also a theoretical basis for a famous scholar surnamed Huang in later generations to determine that the Ming Dynasty was not only not "serious land annexation", but the trouble was that land annexation was not serious.

Judging from the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty, the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty in the Xuande period was about 27 million stones, and the agricultural tax in the sixth year of Wanli in history was about 26.7 million stones, and the gap between before and after was not large.

But the problem was that the gentry were not really content with this level of tax exemption, even though they already had a fairly large amount of tax exemption fields. But maybe it's really that no one thinks they have a lot of money, and it's always good to give it to the court and the emperor a little less - anyway, "Your Majesty is rich all over the world", so why "compete with the people"?

As for the specific thing that Emperor Longqing wanted to buy a batch of jewelry for the harem when he ascended the throne, he was rejected by the civil officials, which is the way of our civil officials - to Jun Yao Shun!

According to Yao Shun's standards, Your Majesty is the ardent expectation of the ministers for you, how can you be in peace and enjoy yourself and buy jewelry for your women? In the long run, the country will not be a country, Your Majesty!

As for people like Xu Jie, who originally had a poor family background, why did he have so many fields after being an official for decades, but he was found out by Hai Rui...... Well, well, this is mainly because Hai Rui is not sensible and can't take on the responsibility at all!

And in reality? What's wrong with paying some taxes?

In fact, even if it is not tax-free, the tax rate of the Ming Dynasty itself is already extremely low, and it is only one-thirtieth of the highest, and in terms of percentage, the tax rate is less than 4%, which is the lowest in all dynasties! You must know that before the new China did not exempt agricultural tax, the average agricultural tax rate was 15.5% of the annual output.

But why is it that under such a low tax rate, once there is a problem in the country, such as after the historical Tunguska boar skin rebellion, the national finances will quickly fall into trouble, and then the people will be in turmoil? Is it because the common people and bitter ha are so expensive?

There are indeed many reasons for this, and the additional levy does have to be counted as one. It's just very strange, because the original tax rate was only four percent, even if it was doubled, that is, it reached the normal level of the Tang Dynasty, but you must know that the agricultural level of the Ming Dynasty itself was somewhat higher than that of the Tang Dynasty.

This question must be clarified for Gao Pragmatic to carry out reforms in the future, and he needs to examine some of the research materials he has seen in his previous life, as well as some of his own thinking, in combination with the situation he is really encountering now.

But he estimates that there is a very important reason for this, which must be that the elite class has a large amount of hidden land in their hands!

Therefore, as a traverser who seriously wanted to "save Ming" through reform rather than revolution, he really wanted to make his hidden fields public, but this idea was only mentioned and was rejected by Zhang Jin.