Fang Yuan returned to the palace, today's assassination made him feel palpitated, and he punished the entire family of the assassin by means of severing and sitting, which was to teach those outlaws who worked for the gentry and wealthy merchants a bloody lesson.

Don't think that with the money you get in exchange for a bad life, you can eat and wear the whole family without worrying, and in the future, you can dare to carry out assassinations for the gentry and wealthy businessmen, etc., first weigh whether you want to take advantage of the future of the family and wife.

Of course, punishing the assassins is a palliative rather than a cure, and if you want to be peaceful, you must punish the mastermind behind the scenes. Qian Qianyi, the old man, must be one of the participants, but just because he is a recluse, how can he say that an assassin can be used to work for him? Standing with him must have been other wealthy businessmen.

Fang Yuan was in a rush of thoughts, Qin Zhan, who was in charge of interrogating the assassin, had already made great strides forward, and said loudly, "Boss, this assassin has been recruited, and in addition to Qian Qianyi, there are also people from the Dongting Shang Gang. ”

"It's the Dongting Merchant Gang again?"

Until the end of the Qing Dynasty and the early years of the Republic of China, the Dongting Merchant Gang was also one of the most important merchant gangs in the country. Among them, the Xi family is known as a financial comprador family in the Republic of China; The Weng family was the home of the emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty; The Shen family is the Shen family, one of the six existing families in China, mentioned in the post of Zhou Gongzi vs. Yi Yeqing, the most famous on the Tianya Forum.

The main advocates of the Dongting Merchant Gang are the Changshu Weng family, the Dongshan Xi family, and the Dongshan Shen family. Of course, the business gang of this cooperation model, the rich merchant families involved cannot be generalized, and a large-scale blow is blown.

At least the Dongshan Xi clan donated a large amount of family wealth to the anti-Qing war in Jiangnan; The Dongshan Shen clan also participated in the War of Resistance against the Qing Dynasty, and the Shen clan's children died on the battlefield.

Except for the Changshu Weng family, who was ready to fight to the end, as long as the other wealthy merchants and scholarly families were willing to cooperate with Fang Yuan's work in Jiangnan, they still couldn't be killed with one rod. All of them were killed, and Jiangnan's economy collapsed.

Fang Yuanmian asked impassively, "How many people are involved in the Dongting Merchant Gang?" ”

Qin Zhan said truthfully, "The assassin has only recruited one person, and that is the Weng family of the Dongting Merchant Gang. Weng Yang and Qian Qianyi are close friends, and they often talk about poetry together. ”

To deal with celebrities and wealthy businessmen like Qian Qianyi and Weng Yang, the problem cannot be solved by force alone, even if you want to make trouble, you must be famous, what Fang Yuan lacks most now is the real evidence to be able to attack these people.

In addition to winning the hearts of the people, another important purpose of Fang Yuan's initiation of the petition system was to collect evidence of the evil deeds committed by these people, as long as the people dared to complain, he could justifiably clean up these gentry and wealthy businessmen.

He summoned Jing Jie and others and began to discuss future countermeasures.

At present, the system of letters and visits has just begun to be implemented, and it is not possible to achieve results in a short period of time, so we can only study and study how to collect taxes and how to engage in money.

Fang Yuan's goal was to pay four taxes: land tax, commercial tax, mining tax, and city tax, and as for other more complex issues such as land annexation and high land rent, they could by no means be solved in a short period of time, so they could only be put on hold for the time being.

If we want to collect taxes and make money, we must understand the ins and outs of these taxes and the problems we face in collecting taxes, so as to solve them.

Tian Fu problem.

In fact, it is the gentry and wealthy businessmen like Qian Qianyi, through collusion with the government, who should have paid less or even no land taxes. The deficit had to be filled, so the government invented the harsh taxes levied on the people and peasants to make up for the shortfall, such as water foot fees, food expenses, transportation fees, treasury fees, and bamboo basket fees.

The above excesses can be called out, and there are even worship fees, worship fees, and even bandit fees, these unbelievable tax names.

The grain yield per mu in the Ming Dynasty was about 300 catties per mu, and the Ming law stipulated that the average amount of grain per mu was about 20 catties according to the advantages and disadvantages of the field, plus the three salaries, and there were 6-9 catties of grain per mu, which was less than 30 catties of grain.

Only 30 catties of grain per mu were paid, and even after the three salaries were added, the land tax of the Ming Dynasty was still less than one-tenth, and the levy ratio was quite low.

However, after the increase in layers of exorbitant donations and miscellaneous items, the peasants need to pay an astonishing 200-250 catties per mu, or even higher, and they will not be able to maintain the most basic survival at all, so they will rise up and rebel.

These increased land endowments that forced the peasants to rebel did not go into the hands of Chongzhen or even the government, but all fell into the pockets of the gentry, wealthy businessmen, and officials.

Business tax issues.

That is, the major wealthy businessmen, through the bribery of the tax collectors of the government, falsely reported and concealed the commercial taxes that should have been paid, and usually less than one-tenth of the actual tax was collected after operation.

The most typical example is the evasion of money. The banknote customs are the seven tax collection agencies established by the central government on the Grand Canal to collect the transportation tax of goods, of which the four prefectures of the governor of Fang Yuan account for two, the Yangzhou banknote customs of Yangzhou Prefecture, and the Hushu banknote customs of Suzhou Prefecture.

The methods of wealthy merchants in the Ming Dynasty to evade money were varied. The most direct is to buy through the banknote customs officials, as described in the "Golden Vase Plum" for example, Ximen Qing passed the Linqing banknote customs worth 10,000 taels, should have paid 300 silver of commercial tax, but by spending 50 taels of silver to buy the banknote customs officials, the actual payment of the treasury of the commercial tax is only 30 taels, which is equal to one-tenth of the normal collection.

In addition to buying money officials, there are also many other ways to evade money, because the Ming Dynasty stipulated that the merchant ships of superior officials, eunuchs, and famous students above the rank of people are exempt from taxes, so a popular method of money evasion was born, that is, ordinary merchant ships need to hang the signs of officials and eunuchs, or invite one or two people to get on the ship, so that they can pass the money customs without spending one or two silver. Of course, the merchant ships gave these officials, eunuchs, and people an indispensable amount of silver.

Therefore, according to Fang Yuan's estimate, the tax of banknote customs alone, the banknote customs fee collected during the Chongzhen period was about 300,000 or 400,000 taels of silver, and if it was really collected truthfully, there would be at least 3 million silver. The difference of nearly ninety percent in the middle is similar to the amount of Ximenqing, officials, eunuchs, and scholars who have taken the examination for fame and collude to embezzle the amount of state taxes.

Mining tax issues

The mining tax problem was a long-standing problem in the Ming Dynasty, and there was a lot of trouble during the Wanli period.

The Ming government explicitly forbade private mining, but private mining existed in the Ming Dynasty for a long time and semi-publicly. The income from private mines, which is also a public gray income, goes into the pockets of wealthy businessmen and local supervisory officials.

In the Wanli period, due to the inability of the treasury to make ends meet, the Wanli Emperor also paid attention to the big fat of the mining tax and levied the mining tax to fill the treasury.

The Wanli Emperor's act of levying a mining tax, like the legalization of prostitution before the crossing, collected taxes in the name of the state, which naturally broke the soil for the existence of gray income and seriously damaged the interests of vested interest groups.

These include wealthy businessmen who open private mines, as well as officials who collect money from them.

Whether it was the Donglin Party, which represented the gentry and wealthy merchants, or the eunuch Party, which represented the emperor's supervision and governorship, they were surprisingly unanimous in their attitude and collectively opposed Wanli's introduction of mining taxes.

In order to collect the mining tax, the Wanli Emperor had a quarrel with the courtiers and the eunuchs, but fortunately, Wanli had a tough attitude and insisted on the collection of the mining tax.

But since the death of Emperor Wanli, after the so-called vigorous 'Baoguoben' movement of the Donglin Party, the teasing prince Zhu Changluo, who was saved, died after only one month on the throne.

But in this month, in addition to the hungry palace maids, this Mingguangzong reciprocated by promoting a bunch of Donglin Party officials who were suppressed by Wanli, and did a serious thing, that is, to cancel the mining tax that Emperor Wanli insisted on.

Since then, the mining tax has been completely abolished, and the gray income has continued to return to the hands of wealthy businessmen and supervisory officials.

The re-imposition of mining tax is a major matter related to the national economy and people's livelihood, and there are many stakeholders involved, and it is by no means something that Fang Yuan can make decisions by patting his head. Since even Wanli, Tianqi, and Chongzhen couldn't solve the problem, Fang Yuan actually couldn't think of a way for a while, so he could only take one step at a time.

The issue of the municipal tax

The so-called municipal tax is the maritime trade tax. Daming's maritime trade is very developed, according to statistics, through the ocean foreign trade, a total of silver flowing into Daming, amounting to hundreds of millions of taels. The Ming Dynasty also set up a special department to manage the city tax.

However, because of the widespread phenomenon of smuggling in maritime trade, the tax objects of the city shipping department are very scarce, and the vast majority of the huge amount of silver flowing into the Ming Dynasty from overseas fell into the hands of smuggling maritime merchants, resulting in a serious loss of government tax revenue.

Among them, the biggest smuggling merchant and pirate is Zheng Zhilong, a maritime merchant who has been entrenched in Zhejiang and Fujian for a generation, waving the banner of Daming and engaging in smuggling. This Zheng Zhilong has been colluding with the Francois Chamber of Commerce, the Dutch, and the Japanese to carry out smuggling activities all the year round, bringing 100,000 armor, thousands of warships, and the fleet artillery is very sophisticated.

In terms of naval combat strength, Zheng Zhilong's fleet is far superior to the naval divisions of the Ming Dynasty, Korea, and the Japanese Kingdom, and is definitely the first fleet in the East.

After Zheng Zhilong recruited An, he was nominally the governor of Fujian, but in fact he was already the actual controller of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, and the government did not dare to interfere with any of his actions at all, on the contrary, in order to buy peace, he had to work hard to curry favor with Zheng Zhilong.

Fang Yuan and the others sorted out the ins and outs of the four taxes, and it was impossible to solve these four tax problems in a basket, so they could only be solved one by one.

According to the degree of difficulty and urgency, Fang Yuan formulated the order of solving the four taxes in turn, the first is Tian Fu, which is documented in the government, and it is more related to the popular hearts of the people in Jiangnan, and must be mentioned in the first place to solve;

The second is the commercial tax, which is less important than the field tax, but it is a big fat meat, so it is placed in the second place;

The third is the mining tax, which is very difficult to solve, and it affects the whole body, so you can only take one step at a time, ranking third;

Finally, there is the city tax, which is an astronomical amount, and it must be collected to solve the long-term peace and stability of the Ming Dynasty for at least a hundred years. However, to rectify this kind of tax, in fact, it is difficult to reach the sky, and the difficulty is no less than that of an all-out war with the Manchus.

It is inevitable to face the leader of the maritime smuggling group - Zheng Zhilong, as well as the Netherlands, Portugal and other Francophone chambers of commerce to rebound comprehensively, there is no strong, Zheng Zhilong, the Francois has a deterrent sailor, rashly move this tax, provoke the maritime businessman Zheng Zhilong, and the Franco machine man led the sailor to come to the door, is to bring humiliation on himself.

The so-called three-year army, ten-year air force, and hundred-year navy to build a powerful naval fleet will cost an astronomical amount of silver, and the manpower and material resources required are innumerable, and there is no need to count on it in a short time.