However, a trip back and forth from India, from winter to summer, or summer to winter, is half a year, and the income is one million taels in half a year, which is still difficult to meet financial needs.

In fact, collecting taxes is the most realistic and reasonable way, after all, it is an agricultural society, agriculture is the largest industry, and the result of tax exemption on agriculture will inevitably lead to a financial crisis.

The British provided Zhou Lang with a classic case, Cornwalli comprehensively promoted the traditional Indian Chadamin system on the territory of the East India Company, sold the right to package taxes to Indian tax contractors, and contracted out the land tax of the whole of Bangladesh, and the fixed bonded amount was very high. But the total tax of one of the Bengal districts was set at 2.68 million pounds, or 8.04 million taels of silver, and in the first year after the reform, the East India Company's tax revenue from Bengal increased by 83 percent, nearly doubled.

The land tax was also greatly increased by taking back the right to collect taxes from the princely lords of India who refused to pay the bonds, and subcontracting them to merchants who were willing to pay higher taxes. In the newly occupied areas, increasingly onerous taxes were introduced to extract wealth more effectively.

For example, in 1792 the Leywar land tax system was piloted in Madras, under which Indian farmers paid an outrageously high amount of land. The main contents are: taxpayers who take peasants (members of communes and small landowners, excluding tenant farmers) as their actual possession of land, who are recognized as landowners; The method of assessing the tax amount of the land under actual cultivation is to first assess the tax on the entire farmland, and then set it to each piece of land, and the tax rate is 95% of the net output, which is converted to about 45% of the total output; The tax rate is non-permanent and can be changed; Pastures and wastelands were owned by the state (East India Company).

In 1822, the Mahawar land tax system was introduced in the newly conquered lands of northwestern India, and the specific content was: the tax was determined according to the actual occupation of the land, and the land was originally occupied by the feudal lord, that is, the feudal lord was the taxpayer, and the village community was originally collectively occupied, that is, the rural commune was the taxpayer; The taxpayer has land ownership; In the case of the landlord as a taxpayer, the tax rate is 83% of the amount of land rent, and in the case of real estate jointly taxed by the village community, the tax rate is 95% of the net income; The tax rate is variable and non-permanent.

In addition, the British have other ways of extraction, such as taxation of Indian handicraft products, export taxation, etc., and also use the annual tax balance to directly purchase Indian products and sell them back to the British, the original East India Company came to India to trade, is to bring real money and silver, in exchange for pepper, precious stones and other Indian products, now directly through the tax of the Indians, in turn to purchase Indian goods, which is equivalent to taking away the material wealth created by the Indians in vain, 1793-1812, with the tax balance to purchase goods worth 25134672 pounds, an average of £1332877 per year.

Modern historians estimate that the wealth stolen from Bengal by the British in 1757-1780 was worth about £38 million, and from India in 1757-1815 amounted to about £1 billion.

Fujian's population is about the same as that of Bangladesh, and the level of economic development is also about the same.

But the British are squeezing colonies and can be reckless, but Zhou Lang is facing the Chinese people, and he must plan for the long term. At least he could not accept the consequences of a man-made famine in Bengal under the frenzied exploitation of the British, starving a third of the population to death.

If Zhou Lang implements an extreme tax system, no matter which tax system the British implement in India, at least 80% of the land rent will be taken, compared to China, the landlords generally take half of the income of the tenant farmers, and the government takes about one-tenth, and now let the landlords hand over 80% of their income, they will definitely rise up and resist, just like after the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the scholars like Jin Shengxi refused to pay taxes and went to the Confucian Temple to cry temple; Even if it can be suppressed, but the political consequences are too serious, such as after the Manchu Qing Dynasty massacre in Jiangnan to resist the tax of scholars in the Waimiao case, among the weakest Jiangnan intellectual elite in history, such as Zhang Huangyan, Wang Fuzhi and other celebrities, can persist in resisting the Qing Dynasty to the end.

At this time, Zhou Lang and the Manchus were vying for the hearts and minds of the people, and if the landlord class was suppressed, causing a long period of civil strife and decades of struggle among the intellectual elite with the landlord background, Zhou Lang could not afford this opportunity cost.

Politically, not only could taxes not be raised, but in order to win over the landed elite, they had to be constantly exempted from taxes.

With the loss of land taxes, the largest source of fiscal revenue in an agrarian society, trade and tariffs unable to make up for the fiscal gap, and the complete absence of financial markets, Zhou Lang found that there was no other good way to alleviate the fiscal crisis than to carry out tax reform.

Therefore, he once again proposed to Wang Fuqian that a unified commercial tax collection agency should be established in all parts of Fujian Province, and that tax collectors should be dispatched to every county, town, and market to collect taxes directly from merchants, and then directly deliver them to the provincial government.

Zhou Lang did not destroy the establishment of Fujian Province, after the occupation of Fujian, Fujian Province is still Fujian Province, the provincial capital is Zhou Lang's ruling body, Wang Fuqian is the highest status civil official in this institution, the governor of Fujian.

When the finances were the most tight before, and the stolen money from Fuzhou had not yet been seized, Zhou Lang once proposed to Wang Fuqian that he should set up a commercial tax agency in Fengshan County, but Wang Fuqian refused very simply at that time.

Wang Fuqian's reason made Zhou Lang very surprised, and even said that the businessman sat on Jia Xiaoben to trade, what he was doing was nothing more than needles, threads, brains, silk and linen cloth and other transactions related to the people's livelihood, and also proposed that Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, had explicitly exempted the tax rate of books, pen and ink, farm tools, boats, cars, silk cloths, etc., and issued an edict that "the things of marriage and funeral sacrifices, the silk cloth of boats, cars, etc., are not taxed", and his son Zhu Di once again reiterated the principle of tax exemption for goods such as people's livelihood, and ordered that "gifts for weddings and funerals, self-woven cloths, agricultural tools, food and taxed things, Vehicles and ships that transport their own goods, fish, vegetables and fruits that are not marketed are exempt from tax."

The ancient Chinese dynasty implemented a policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce, but Zhou Lang felt that from the perspective of the implementation process, this was simply a paradox.

While the West practices mercantilism, and the state's tax revenue mainly comes from the merchants, while China's practice of heavy phystocracy has to extract the most material resources from the peasants.

Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di respectively ordered the exemption of taxes on weddings, funerals, boats, cars, silk cloths and other products related to people's livelihood, but in an agricultural society, where there is a complex business classification, most of the businessmen are related to the necessities of clothing, food, housing and transportation, once exempt from taxes, the foundation of the entire commercial tax will be destroyed.

It is no wonder that in the Song Dynasty, the commercial tax could reach half of the fiscal revenue, and the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty had to loot any kind of money.

In addition to exempting a considerable number of categories of commodity taxes, the Ming Dynasty also implemented a low tax rate on the taxed industries, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered, "All commercial taxes, thirty taxes one, those who pass the order will be judged to be violated", in fact, the Qing Dynasty Kang Yongqian three dynasties also implemented roughly the same policy, Kangxi even made it clear that merchants are one of the four people, to benefit the people and facilitate business, and it is strictly forbidden for the powerful to interfere with merchant trade in commodity distribution centers.

Kangxi clearly ordered, "The officials and families of the civil and military ministers below the prince, forcibly occupying the important land of Guanjin and not allowing merchants and traders, will be in the flail for three months in the place where the original offender was committed." It is the responsibility of the people to be 40 boards, and the flag man has a hundred whips. The vassal king who connived at his family was fined 10,000 taels of silver, and the duke (duke) was fined 1,000 taels of silver, and the administrator of the family was dismissed. The generals and the following civil and military officials were dismissed. ”

Kangxi's protection of merchants is especially worse than that of the Ming Dynasty, similar to the situation that the princes of the late Ming Dynasty set up cards to collect taxes at various checkpoints without permission, Kangxi will be heavily punished, and the punishment is extremely strong, and the more powerful the elite, the greater the punishment, and the following officials are even directly dismissed.

Kangxi also appreciated the Qing Dynasty superintendent Xu Xuling's suggestion that "the only one who has the blood of wealth and goods is a businessman", such a view with the idea of rewarding. He believed that agriculture and commerce should develop at the same time, and proposed that "agriculture is prosperous and there is no open land, the country is rich and the spring goods are circulating, Yu is rich and prosperous, and Xun is on the long".

The preferential treatment policy for businessmen created by Kangxi was called the policy of "supporting businessmen" and "compassionate businessmen" by later scholars, and the major policies of Kang Yongqian's three dynasties were all created by Kangxi, and most of the descendants of later generations followed them.

Under these policies, the status of merchants in the Qing Dynasty was indeed higher than that of the Ming Dynasty, unlike the Ming Dynasty that made many restrictions on merchants, such as no matter how rich they were, they could not wear silk and satin, and they could only wear soap-colored clothes like the officials in the yamen and the Guigong in the Qinglou, and the material could only be linen. There are also merchants who cannot sit in sedan chairs, whose houses cannot be higher than ordinary people's homes, and whose children cannot participate in the imperial examinations, and so on.

These restrictions were gradually lifted at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and even the imperial court deliberately opened a business department in order to take care of the rich salt merchants in the world, and specially let the children of these merchants go to the examination for fame, and the acceptance rate is much higher than that of ordinary imperial examinations.

The Qing Dynasty's policy towards merchants was obviously more generous and preferential than those policies formulated by Zhu Yuanzhang, firstly, the Qing Dynasty inherited the Ming system and inherited these measures at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and secondly, the nomadic people generally attached more importance to commerce than the farming peoples, and the Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty also did not suppress commerce, and the status of merchants in the Mongolian and Yuan dynasties was not discriminated against.

The reason why Wang Fuqian used the example of the Ming Dynasty to oppose Zhou Lang's extensive collection of commercial taxes, instead of using the policies of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to oppose it, was mainly a matter of position, and now that he was standing on the position of opposing the Qing Dynasty, he naturally could not use the policies of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to make an argument.

Soon after Wang Fuqian's opposition last time, Zhou Lang seized the corrupt and stolen goods of Fuzhou Prefecture, and the financial crisis was alleviated for a while, and he did not control the whole of Fujian, so the matter of levying commercial taxes was not over.

This time the financial crisis reappeared, Zhou Lang once again put forward a proposal to levy commercial taxes, Wang Fuqian was still opposed, but he was also aware of the financial pressure after the expansion of the army, so he proposed his solution.

Wang Fuqian's plan was a traditional solution to the financial problem that had appeared in Chinese history, and he suggested that Zhou Lang implement a monopoly on salt and iron.