In addition, when paying the land endowment, the government of the Northern Song Dynasty also used the "branch transfer" and "transformation" of the previous generation to exploit the peasants.

The so-called branch transfer means that the government forces the northern peasants to send the autumn tax grain to the border towns to pay under the pretext of urgent military needs, and they have to pay all the expenses for people and animals. In areas where there is no task of relocation, farmers also have to pay the "road foot fee" per bucket according to the amount of land endowment, that is, the road fee for transporting taxes and goods.

The so-called change means that the government orders the peasants to change the specified materials or cash under the pretext of need.

In the process, it was convenient for the government to profit in every way.

In addition to the two taxes, there is also the head money, and in the Northern Song Dynasty, whenever there is a silver money cashier with the government, the head money must be collected according to a certain proportion. Originally, the head money was a kind of handling fee, which was used by the tax collectors and also to make up for the depletion of the warehouse, and later became an additional tax levied with the field tax.

The tax rate of the head money in various places is different, and it is constantly increasing, and the head money of the Song Dynasty is not limited to the additional collection when the field tax is paid, and all the revenue and expenditure behaviors with the government are levied on the head money.

The Yicang tax in the Song Dynasty originated from Emperor Renzong, who was known for being close to the people, and was mainly levied on wealthy peasants.

The Northern Song Dynasty third-class households belonged to the ranks of large and medium-sized landlords, Renzongqing lasted for a long time, so that the third-class households lost rice and two buckets of rice to accept a liter, in order to deal with the righteous warehouse to prevent floods and droughts, and later the time was in vogue. During the time of Song Zhezong, it was changed to pay grain to local warehouses to supplement the state's funds, so it lost the original meaning of Yicang and became a kind of tax.

In addition, in the Song Dynasty, there were silkworm salt money, vinegar interest money, market money and so on.

In short, from the Northern Song Dynasty to the Southern Song Dynasty, there were many additional taxes for land tax, some of which were levied all over the country, and some were levied exclusively on several counties or one place, sometimes in the ascendant, sometimes in abolition, and so on.

In addition to the regular and additional taxes levied on the land, there was also forced labor against the peasants. The main households of the Song Dynasty (those who owned land and paid two taxes to the government) also had to go to all levels of government to serve as errand servants (also called official service).

The burden of servitude was so heavy that some powerful landlords had to try to escape, and most of them ended up in middle and lower households. Once they undertook the heavy duties of being in charge of official property and being in charge of transportation, they often went bankrupt. The other type of miscellaneous work, also known as "servitude", was borne almost entirely by the poor peasants.

The Song Dynasty inherited five dynasties, and its tax policy was deeply affected by the disadvantages of the troubled times. After the founding of the country, Song Taizu had the intention to eliminate its shortcomings, but blindly used tolerant means to alleviate this problem.

Later, the country continued to suffer from external troubles, serious war losses, a large number of soldiers, huge military expenditures, a huge bureaucratic ranks, huge operating costs of government agencies, and serious problems such as redundant officials, redundant soldiers, and redundant expenses.

Some taxes were originally collected with good motives, but in the process of implementation, they gradually deteriorated and became the government's means of generating revenue, resulting in the disadvantages of tax collection in the Northern Song Dynasty becoming more and more serious.

The Song Dynasty was a civilian-governed society, a country ruled by literati, and it was the literati who covered up many ugly misdeeds under the surface of a glorious civilization.

However, some good policies are mostly on paper and have not been effectively implemented, and many heavy tax items have also been rationalized for their existence. The rule of the literati has caused many policies that should have been implemented to be mired in repeated controversies, with many discussions and few things to do, and many good policies can only be preserved in the beautiful imagination of some people and the multiplicity of the clerical system, and the maladministration that is common in society is obvious to all.

These have been pointed out when the Yuan people did the "History of the Song Dynasty": "The world is said to be Confucianism more than deeds, if the words of the Song people are food, it is also reckless." ”

In addition, the Song Dynasty had a policy of rewarding and punishing local officials with tax revenues for their political achievements, rewarding those who paid more and punishing those who paid less. It is true that the revenue of the Song Dynasty treasury increased, but objectively it often became an incentive for local officials to set up clever names and extract people's wealth.

Speaking of this, I have to say that Wang Hao and Gao Yu, the two difficult brothers, are both masters of holding money for Zhao Ji, and both of them are naturally excellent as Zhao Ji's lackeys, as for the difference between the end and the end, Wang Hao is still available for Zhao Huan.

In other words, as far as the Northern Song Dynasty was concerned, the heavy tax oppression caused a large number of peasants to go bankrupt and unemployed. Their main way out is to enlist in the army or serve, enter the city to engage in handicrafts or commerce, become monks, and a few or become thieves, such as the so-called heroes on Shuibo Liang Mountain.

Of course, because the ruling class of later generations took it out of context for their own use, they also greatly embellished their deeds, without mentioning the bad deeds of opening butcher shops, poaching people's hearts and drinking, and robbing houses and forcing people to be thieves but called "earning".

However, when it comes to the agricultural tax on land in the Song Dynasty, it reminds people of the Fangtian Tax Law promulgated for the countryside and peasants during Wang Anshi's reform. It can also be seen from the name of this legal provision that the reform mainly lies in two aspects: "Fangtian" and "Equal Tax".

Indeed, the content of Wang Anshi's new law is mainly to clear the zhangzhang, verify the amount of land occupied by each household, divide the field grades, formulate the cadastral, and determine the amount of peasants' tax according to the regulations of the grades.

During the Northern Song Dynasty, some situation households (bureaucrats, gentry, officials, and landlords were called situation households or official households) and temple households (monks, Taoist priests, and other households who occupied land were called temple households) occupied a large amount of land, and sometimes a large number of hidden fields and tax evasion. Due to the severity and unevenness of the servitude, in order to reduce taxes, ordinary landlords and households in the situation dispersed their land and people into many households, which were called "false name households"; Some people falsely dedicate the land to monks and temples and Taoist temples, which is called "false name consignment"; Some people pretend to sell their fields to tenants in a situation and use the name of rich tenants to escape forced labor, which is called "blackmailing tenants".

In this way, their burden on the state is largely shifted to the heads of the vast majority of the lower households. The country's real tax revenues have been shrinking, and fiscal revenues have also been affected. Before Wang Anshi, the Song government had several "square fields" measures, trying to clean up some hidden fields, tax evasion, and expand the country's tax sources, but the resistance was relatively large, and the results were very small, and a lot of financial and material resources of the state were wasted, and such policies were constantly criticized by the people of the time.

Wang Anshi once lobbied and encouraged the implementation of the reform of the law with the idea that "the people do not give more money and the country uses spare", so the purpose of the reform is very important to solve the financial crisis of the Song Dynasty. To a certain extent, the phenomenon of tax evasion in hidden fields has been eliminated, tax revenues have increased, and peasants' burdens have also been partially lightened.

However, the new law infringed on the vested interests of the powerful landlords, which was strongly opposed, and the slow progress of land measurement at that time due to the backward technology at that time, so it gradually came to a halt.

Wang Anshi's Fangtian Tax Law could not avoid the fate of the previous generation of "Fangtian" policies, and like other new laws, it generally ended in failure.

What awaited the Northern Song Dynasty would be the inevitable fate of the reincarnation of Chinese history, the Jin people went south, and the Song court, which was riddled and weakened by internal crises, could not withstand the rapid attack of the powerful Jurchen army, and soon perished.

(Here we refer to the "History of the Song Dynasty", Li Tao's "Continuation of the Governance of Tongjian", Qi Xia's "Economic History of the Song Dynasty", Ye Tan's "Theory of Rich Countries and Rich People-Based on the Investigation of the Song Dynasty", Quan Hansheng's "Research on Chinese Economic History", Xiang Huaicheng's "General History of China's Finance: Five Dynasties and Two Song Volumes", Zhu Shaohou and other "Ancient Chinese History: Volume II". ）