Zhifu, Qishan.

Zheng Zhilong is gone, Zheng Zhibao is also gone, Zheng Sen is still not there, and Zeng Ying is very interested in staying in Dengzhou. This is called staying in the rear, and Feng Chengshi, who is in charge of the military operation plan, has a feeling of turning over and being in charge.

Although he knew that what he was doing would be a 'notorious' thing, and he would be spurned by the world, and even left a stench for a hundred years. But Feng Chengshi was as happy as he was.

It's so wonderful to have this kind of power in your hands and sweep everything away.

As a member of the Zheng Group, he is a small talent, in order to stand out from countless clerical officials, how much mental energy has he wasted?

Now I have finally been entrusted with an important task and can show my skills. If he didn't take the opportunity to impress the little grandfather with Guogong, wouldn't all his years of hard work come to naught?

Therefore, Feng Chengshi looked at the gentry and landlords of Denglai, like a group of pigs and sheep waiting to be slaughtered.

"There is something special about this place, and many local gentry are afraid of our army's retaliation, so they dare not get close to the Tartars. I can't get their handles. However, under the tough measures of our army, the matter of renting the land is still proceeding smoothly. After observing during this time, there are still very few people who dare to go all the way to the dark and carry our army to the end. ”

In the internal small meeting, Feng Chengshi made a simple summary of the nearest things. The words were a little red, and the corners of Zhou Lianggong's mouth, who were attending the meeting as an observer, twitched.

"But the matter of renting land is important, and the matter of collecting taxes is just as important."

Yes, the focus of today's meeting is on tax collection.

It is not only necessary to collect this year's summer tax and autumn tax, but also to collect the tax arrears accumulated in the coming year.

Specifically, it is the tax arrears accumulated by the gentleman's family in Denglai in the coming year.

Before, the Zheng family was in Denglai to plan Ding Qingtian, and then cut the meat with a knife, so that the Denglai gentry were cut so hard. Some of the gentry organized domestic slaves to resist.

But all the resistance was taken down by the Zheng family.

Some of them lost their heads, and some were sent to Nanyang, but many more remained, and their families were left with 50 to 100 acres of fields. You can't just take things that you don't have on someone's head, can you?

Zheng Zhilong would not do such a tasteless thing.

For those gentry who did not have the handle to arrest him, the confiscated land was transferred to Nanyang by him in the old way - 1:1.

In the eyes of the gentry of the Central Plains at this time, the 1:1 Nanyang land is purely Zheng Zhilong's disgusting people. Don't say it's one to one, it's one to ten, they won't go to Nanyang.

But this is still a 'hidden danger' in Zheng Zhilong's eyes.

If it is a hidden danger, it must be eliminated, and the current tax collection and recovery of tax arrears are the magic weapon that Zheng Zhilong uses to eliminate hidden dangers.

Zhou Lianggong was relieved, with a decent smile on his face. Sure enough, it is to eliminate the land deed of Nanyang, since this is the case, then if the Zheng family wants to recover the tax arrears, let them recover it well.

The Ming Dynasty has been revived soon, and this Qilu still has to be attributed to the Ming Dynasty. These gentlemen are suffering a little loss now, but they will always get better in the future.

Because the imperial court did not pass Zheng Zhilong's liquidation charter, those scholars with meritorious fame, when the Ming Dynasty recovered, they were all masters.

As a member of the ruling class of the Ming Dynasty, Zhou Lianggong was well aware of the gentry's hidden behavior and hidden rules for tax evasion.

To say a fair word, the reason why the Ming Dynasty ended up with the collapse of financial resources and the lack of food and ammunition in the end, and finally almost lost the world and the country. This gentry class is to blame.

Now these people are punished, even if their retribution is good.

Hengzhu's home is in Jinling, not in Denglai.

Zhou Lianggong didn't have the idea of topping the cow in Zheng Zhi for the sake of the Denglai gentry. Although with the hope of the revival of the Ming Dynasty, Zhou Lianggong has unconsciously downplayed his relationship with Zheng Zhilong, and it can be said that he has changed from a backup of the Zheng Group like Li Shiyuan to a friendly person like Zeng Ying to the Zheng Group, but he has never had the idea of making enemies with Zheng Zhilong in exchange for the trust of the imperial court.

Therefore, at present, Zhou Lianggong, who is Zeng Ying's representative, is sitting in the conference hall like a wooden man, and allows Feng Chengshi to say those vicious methods of "harming people", and he does not say a word, so he has not heard it.

……

"Zheng thief wants to recover the tax arrears......" This news blew like the wind on the land of Denglai.

Zeng Ying, who was in Denglai, heard the news from the returning Zhou Lianggong one step earlier, Zeng Ying laughed, and Guo Shangyou laughed so much that he couldn't breathe.

The latter is a great nobleman who started as Zhou Lianggong.

At the beginning, Zhou Lianggong was able to lead thousands of Denglai troops to the west for reinforcements as the county commander of Weixian County. The biggest reason is that he has the support of a group of old ministers in Weixian, and the number one is Guo Shangyou.

And Zhang Erzhong, the former Shaanxi Fu Governor who ranked second, has now been recruited into the DPRK.

Guo Shangyou is a person who is the same as Cao Juan, and now he is also eighty, but he is still in good health.

Wanli twenty-nine years 91601) Jinshi. He successively served as the county commander, the middle of the matter, the inspection of the imperial history, the prefect, the governor of Caoyun, and the secretary of the household department.

It's a celebrity.

In history, when Wang Aoyong recommended Qi Lu and Qi Qi twice, he was in the first rank. But being able to refuse Shiqing and preserve his own integrity is also commendable in the environment of the late Ming Dynasty.

And at the moment, he and Zhang Erzhong and others have moved to Dengzhou early, and Zeng Ying respects them very much.

One of the two is a governor who came step by step from a small county official, and the other is a former household secretary, who really knows too well about tax arrears and concealment.

The registered population of the Ming Dynasty reached its peak in the Chenghua years, and in the following hundred years, the civilian population continued to grow, but the Dingkou registered by the government was not as good as a year. In this regard, the number of acres of land is also the same, and the number on the official land register is too far from the actual situation.

The Ming Dynasty collected taxes according to the head of the household, and many gentry and large households, the old and young people in the family numbered dozens, and there were many male and female slaves, but they were only recorded as one household in the household registration book. However, as a result of land annexation, many peasants lost their land and became tenants, or their entire families went into slavery in large households, and these people naturally did not exist in terms of household registration.

There are also immigrants who have migrated from other places, who rarely take the initiative to report their household registration, and the surrounding large households often try their best to hide the population number.

In fact, the Ming court also had the population inventory and the measurement of acres of land, and even in the rules and regulations, but the matter was man-made, and the rules and laws that were originally the court to restrict the local government have become a shortcut for local officials to get rich.

As soon as the silver of white flowers is stuffed, ten acres of paddy fields will become three or five acres of dry land, and ten strong laborers in the family will become a family of five. As long as you pay attention to the proportions and grasp the bottom line of the old men - if all the population and field registrations are greatly reduced without warning, it will affect the performance appraisal of the officials and masters.

But as long as the two sides reach a silent tacit understanding, then everything will be silent.

There is even an interesting story in the tax history books of the Ming Dynasty in later generations: in the Hongwu year, the Ming court could receive more than 30 million stone of tax grain a year, and one year received a maximum of 32 million. Zhu Yuanzhang was very happy, and felt that so much grain was enough for his Zhu family's Ming Dynasty. He issued a regulation similar to Kang Mazi's never to increase the tax, stipulating that in the future, taxes will be collected according to this standard, and the annual tax grain will not exceed 3,003, so that the burden on the common people will not be too heavy.

Zhu Yuanzhang was too cruel to the readers, and he killed the readers to be afraid of him, resented him, and hated him. Naturally, no one will praise him, see how Kang Mazi collects sycophants?

However, it turned out that Zhu Hongwu was too naïve. Because he said that this standard was basically not reached later, except for the Yongle Emperor, who was as strong as his father, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were very happy to reach the standard of 27 million per year, and there were only more than 25 million left in the Wanli period, so the three major expeditions of Wanli spent the treasury of the Ming court......

It was Chongzhen's turn to succeed to the throne, and the scholars said that he collected too much taxes that led to the peasant uprising, and that it was the Liaojiao and other three salaries that were too cruel to the people and harmed the people. But in reality?

Emperor Chongzhen, the unlucky doll, sat in a mess, but he didn't have the ability to build another river and mountain, if so, he could only become the king of the dead country.

The grassroots of the Ming Dynasty is completely rotten, and the Ming Dynasty is not without money, but this money cannot be collected in the hands of the emperor. Emperor Chongzhen hung on the famous crooked neck tree and cried: "The king is not the king of the dead country, the ministers are the ministers of the dead country!" ”

Although it is too one-sided, judging from the performance of Ming officials, it is not completely unreasonable.

Whether it is Guo Shangyou or Zeng Ying, they don't have the courage to challenge the unspoken rules of this society. However, the two people who still had some loyalty to the Ming were happy to see the gentry suffer and accept some lessons.

They didn't dare to 'offend' the scholars, but Zheng Zhilong had already broken the jar. People will soon be called lonely overseas, so he will not dump those shameless gentry.

Looking at Zheng Zhilong's actions during these days, it is called a 'brutality'. In the eyes of the people of Denglaishi, Zheng Zhilong can compete with Qin Shi Huang, who burned books and pit Confucianism.

Therefore, whether it was Zeng Ying or Guo Shangyou, they all laughed after hearing the news. At the same time, just like Zheng Zhilong's previous refusal when he asked people to collect the fields, he once again rejected many gentry friends who came to the door in the morning to cry.

The taxation system of the Ming Dynasty adhered to the customs of the Tang and Song dynasties and adopted a two-tax system. Taxes are levied twice a year: summer grain and autumn grain. Theoretically, only rice and wheat grains are collected, which is called 'natural color', but in practice it is also allowed to use silver coins and cloth, which is also called 'folding color'.

In addition to paying food, the common people should also bear the burden of forced labor every year, that is, to work for the government. These conscripts are also allowed to be offset by spending money. Especially in the late Ming Dynasty, after a whip law, most of the conscripts were converted into silver money. Therefore, when taxes are collected in various places, they are basically collecting money and grain.

But to know the exact number of acres of the gentry's house, to know the division of acres (whether it is good or bad, paddy or dry), and how many shallow waters they handed over back then, it is an extremely complicated project.

Not to mention the entire Denglai, just a strange mountain can make Feng Chengshi busy and can't get out.

Therefore, they still have to rely on the original officials, because only these officials know who told how much tax to pay and how much tax was missed.