There is a thing called forced labor in history, and the craftsmen are managed separately in the Ming Dynasty, and the craftsmen do not need to pay taxes for them to engage in the handicraft industry, nor do they need to pay taxes for the products they produce, but they must serve the government regularly.

This is the system inherited from the Yuan Dynasty in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang's family is a gold digger, the Mongols stipulate that the gold diggers must pay a fixed amount of gold sand, and then the gold mining is finished, but the household registration can not be changed, Zhu Yuanzhang's family has no land, can only be reduced to odd jobs for a living, and also have to use the money from odd jobs to exchange for gold and pay taxes.

The Qing Dynasty abolished the household registration system and abolished the system of forced labor, which was a relative progress. Later, Yongzheng apportioned into the mu, even the poll tax of the nature of the Ding Kou tax was canceled, because a large number of handicraftsmen are actually rural handicraftsmen, most of the handicrafts are in the way of subsidizing the family in their spare time, most of the craftsmen are still engaged in agricultural labor, or self-cultivation, or renting, after the apportionment into the mu, it is equivalent to canceling the tax of those craftsmen who are completely separated from agricultural labor.

The taxation of poor craftsmen, although there are indeed some suspicions of beggars snatching food in their bowls, Zhou Lang still levied a wide range of handicraft taxes.

The purpose, of course, is not for money, but for regulation and protection, so the tax rate is not heavy.

Handicraftsmen are required to declare according to the industry they are engaged in, and the government issues licenses, and the tax rate is very low, for example, silk weavers pay taxes only one penny a year, and the heaviest tax collectors in jewelry shops only pay one tael of silver a year. However, these workers were protected by the government.

The Qing government did not collect taxes on craftsmen, nor did it provide reasonable protection for craftsmen, but entrusted guilds, which were handed over to the government and under the control of workers, and some leaders would inevitably abuse their power. Because they are responsible for communicating with the government and paying taxes, the government often favors them, and ordinary workers do not even have the opportunity or reason to hear from the sky. They can only be allowed to exploit by official and unofficial means.

There are also some guilds with a violent nature, such as the slaughtering industry, the government ignores them, and as a result, they are exploited by various gang-like organizations, and in some places, the butcher shop is all run by people from one place, and people from other areas want to open a butcher shop, they will gather together to attack, and it has the taste of occupying territory.

But if a butcher applies for a license from the government and pays taxes according to the regulations, and there is a guild or gang or fellow villager association to trouble him, he can file a lawsuit, I, Zhang Fei, am a butcher approved by the government, why don't you He Jin let me kill pigs, why don't you Zheng Tu let me sell meat. This lawsuit is clear, and it is accurate.

In addition, Zhou Lang thinks from a long-term perspective that the industrial age has arrived, and industry will definitely replace agriculture as the largest wealth creation industry in society. If industry is not taxed, it is a fiscal system that has no logic at all, just as an agrarian society does not tax agriculture, a commercial society does not tax commerce, and a financial society does not tax banks.

Another significance is that it has the same significance as the collection of mining tax, which has the significance of managing the society, through taxation, you can count how many industries and how many employees there are in the country, and this information has important reference significance for social management.

Zhou Lang has been cautious enough, and the tax rate and so on have been communicated with various guilds. But as with any reform in history, no matter how significant, it still provokes opposition. Yongzheng's reform of apportioning land into mu should be said to be of progressive significance, but both landlords and tenant farmers have opposed it. The landlords objected that they controlled the land, but they had little money, and now they spread all the taxes on the fields, making them feel that they were paying more taxes. Tenant farmers in some places also objected, and the people of Zhongxiang County, Hubei Province, gathered to resist the grain, because the county had a small amount of grain, and as a result, the whole province apportioned it, causing them to pay more taxes per mu and more to each person. In the end, the people gathered to resist the grain, the officers and soldiers went out of the city to arrest, and more than 100 people fell into the moat and drowned.

After Zhou Lang's taxation method was withdrawn, many workers were immediately dissatisfied and ran to the yamen to make trouble, saying that they would not give the lives of the small people. As a result of the communication with the guilds, most of these workers were spontaneous. These workers couldn't see the protection they got after paying taxes, and only saw that they had to pay more taxes, so they made trouble, which also gave Zhou Lang a headache.

The big guilds did not participate, but it does not mean that the small guilds or gangs below the guilds did not participate, and even some landlord forces wanted to test Zhou Lang's temperament and instigated them from behind the scenes.

A large number of officials also opposed the imposition of this tax, and Wang Fuqian personally approached Zhou Lang to oppose it, saying that the Manchu Qing Dynasty did not accept money from craftsmen, and a group of craftsmen had no land and no land, so they relied on their crafts to eat, and they had to pay taxes, which was only absurd. Tax officials are also not in favor, mainly because the workload is too large. There are hundreds of thousands of handicraftsmen in Guangdong, scattered in both urban and rural areas, and it is too troublesome to collect taxes.

The opposition was so loud that Zhou Lang couldn't help but wonder if they shouldn't be taxed, after all, Zhou Lang always believed that if a policy made most people feel inconvenient, it must be a policy problem.

Now the taxpayers are against it, and the taxpayers are also against it, Zhou Lang is as good as a stream, and immediately announced a trial implementation, only declare, not pay taxes. It is not mandatory, those who are willing to declare declare, and those who are unwilling to declare do not declare.

If it is really advantageous, I believe that the common people will choose with their feet.

The opposition of tens of thousands of craftsmen made Zhou Lang understand a truth, the complexity of direct management of tens of millions of people is too great, and the situation of all walks of life is different, and there will be problems if taxes are levied according to the same method.

It is also Zhou Lang's assumption that Hong Kong can levy salaries tax on employees, which is established under the strict management system of modern society, and the citizens of that era have the quality of taking the initiative to declare. But the common people at the end of the Qing Dynasty couldn't eat enough, and it was unrealistic to expect them to take the initiative to declare.

It is okay not to tax the workers, but it is a bit too much to say that the factory owners are not taxed. Of course, the levy can not be too high, Guangzhou handicraft industry is developed, but more is based on the individual cottage industry, although there are handicraft workshops, but not the mainstream, if the workshop owner is taxed too much, resulting in a heavy burden, it is tantamount to forcing the handicraft workshop to regress in the direction of the cottage industry. The factory owner could have disbanded the factory and distributed the looms, providing raw materials for the family to produce, and retreating to become a contractor, a situation that existed in Guangzhou.

Therefore, Zhou Lang changed his method, from directly issuing licenses to craftsmen in all walks of life and collecting the type of authorized tax, to issuing licenses to handicraft workshop owners, collecting factory tax, and the provisional tax rate, the annual tax rate of a silk weaving workshop is 10 taels, and the highest jewelry store is 30 taels.

The reason for not restricting the size of the factory and adopting a fixed tax amount is because it is worried that the factory owner will hide the number of workers, just like the large family hides the number of men before the division into the mu. And it forces the factory owner to scale up, and the more workers he hires, the less tax he shares. It is conducive to the transformation to large industry. Zhou Lang believes that once the scale of the factory is large enough, the factory owner will find the know-how to manage mass production.

In short, even if the factory owners are only taxed, the new tax items are dozens of times more than in the past, because there are so many industries in Guangzhou that the tax officials do not have the ability to manage this level of taxes, which will lead to a decline in administrative efficiency or the suspicion that the cost of taxation is too high.

So Zhou Lang adjusted to, simplify the classification, and has formed a large industry guild docking, Guangzhou has seventy-two lines, but Zhou Lang simplified into twelve large industries, silk weaving industry counts a line, cotton and linen and a line, copper and iron and a line, porcelain line counts a line, wine line counts a line, wood line counts a line, sauce vinegar oil squeezing and a line is called condiment line, rouge gouache and other cosmetics and a line is called a female honor line, rice milling noodles and other food processing is counted as a line of food line, paper, pen, ink, inkstone printing and other stationery utensils and a line of stationery line, Gold, silver, jade carving, ivory carving, etc. and a line called the jewelry line, in addition to the advantages of Guangzhou export to the world, handmade products of various fans, because of the large scale of a separate line called the fan line.

Those small industries that are not included in the 12 major industries, such as flower ties, paper-cutting, etc., are unified into miscellaneous industries.

This is only a temporary division, according to the actual situation, the tax system will be set up first, effective supervision and management, if any industry suddenly rises, it can also be listed as a separate line in the future.

Commercial tax mainly affects Guangzhou, and these factory taxes have a greater impact on Foshan, and the opposition in Foshan is also the largest, mainly because the organization of handicrafts is stricter than commerce, but it has not developed to the extent of tax resistance, because of the lessons learned from the opposition of craftsmen, Zhou Lang announced that this year and next year will be exempted, and the next year will begin to levy, and the link is emotional, and secondly, Zhou Lang has taken a resolute attitude and sent troops into Foshan.

When these things are done, the second year of Jiaqing will also be over.

Under effective management, the rapid recovery of commerce in Guangzhou, including Guangzhou and Foshan, especially the credit support provided by Zhou Lang, has greatly alleviated the currency problem in Guangzhou, which has become a shortage of money in recent years.

In recent years, the root cause of the tight monetary foundation is still here in Zhou Lang, who first extorted 20 million yuan in Guangzhou for ransom fees, and then went to Beijing to repeat the old tricks, causing tens of millions of taels of silver to be withdrawn from Guangdong, which of course will cause the silver to be tense.

Monetary conditions were tight, market circulation was not smooth, merchants relied more on borrowing to get by, prices fell sharply, and productive industries such as handicrafts were implicated.

It is very dangerous to link social and economic activities to a precious metal that is not abundant in the country, and there is only one solution, which is to issue new alternative currencies, such as copper coins minted by the government in previous dynasties, and even iron coins in the era of copper shortage.

Of course, Zhou Lang is not so far behind, he also plans to issue banknotes!