Due to the importance of industrial and commercial taxation, although the Ministry of Finance wanted to implement the new industrial and commercial tax reform as soon as possible, in order to ensure the stable implementation of the tax reform and not to cause turmoil due to hasty withdrawal, the joint meeting of the cabinet also rejected the proposal of the Ministry of Finance to comprehensively implement the industrial and commercial tax reform in 1865.

And ask the Ministry of Finance to continue the industrial and commercial tax reform!

For this reason, the Ministry of Finance had to slow down the implementation of industrial and commercial tax reform, but chose to continue the pilot!

However, the scale of the pilot project is larger than before, and the Ministry of Finance has initially decided to expand the scope of the original pilot areas, namely Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, and expand the original county and government pilot to the provincial pilot.

It was initially planned to be implemented in Shaotai Road, Ning, Zhejiang, and South Anhui Road, and in addition, Guangdong, Zhili, and Hubei provinces each chose a province for pilot.

And these pilot areas all have one thing in common, that is, these places have small and medium-sized industries and businesses, which are enough to undertake the task of piloting.

However, although their industry and commerce are stronger than many places, they are still very lacking compared to the larger industrial cities such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Wuchang, so even if something goes wrong in the pilot process, it will not have much impact.

Among these pilot areas, the most important one is naturally Ningshaotai Road, to be precise, it should be Ningbo Mansion among them!

Ningbo was one of the early open ports in China, and it began to develop industry and commerce early, although it was affected by the nearby port of Shanghai, which caused the port of Ningbo to develop into a mega-industrial city as quickly as Shanghai.

But in the country. Ningbo is still a second-tier industrial city, with tea and raw silk exports as its leading industries. It is supplemented by cotton spinning and some other light industries.

Its industrial output value is among the best in Zhejiang Province, far exceeding the provincial capital Hangzhou and Huzhou, the main production area of silkworm cocoons.

With the existence of such a typical industrial city as Ningbo. Only then can we better test whether the industrial and commercial tax reform is feasible.

After all, the industrial and commercial tax reform should not be carried out in some areas where industries are backward and mainly rely on agriculture.

After the second round of industrial and commercial tax reform pilots set by the Ministry of Finance, it is predicted that the industrial and commercial tax revenue in the pilot areas will increase by about 15 percentage points compared with the original.

Moreover, the adjustment of many detailed taxes in the industrial and commercial tax will further adjust the structure of domestic industrial development, and indirectly promote capital investment in the industries that the empire wants them to invest.

This reform of the industrial and commercial taxation will be the main business of the Ministry of Finance for the next few years, and it will also be a major event for the Empire, because it is a question of whether the Empire's future tax revenue will be increased and whether the framework for industrial development will be healthier.

Lin Zhe is naturally more concerned about this. For a series of reports submitted by the Ministry of Finance, Lin Zhe personally looked at them and gave instructions.

Regarding the reform of industrial and commercial taxation, Lin Zhe instructed the Ministry of Finance to boldly innovate and reform on the premise of maintaining stability.

And this is also the resolution of the joint cabinet meeting, the consensus of most high-ranking officials in the empire.

For the empire's finances, it is important to maintain the stability of fiscal revenue, and in the early stage of maintaining fiscal revenue, the fiscal revenue should be increased as much as possible. While increasing fiscal revenue, we must not excessively damage the interests of enterprises, and ensure that enterprises have a certain amount of profits to maintain continuous development.

The reason why the new industrial and commercial tax reform has attracted widespread attention from the top officials of the empire is that stable fiscal revenues are related to military spending. Administrative expenses, education, industrial and commercial support, transportation and other expenses, no matter what the empire wants to do, it is inseparable from financial support.

Arguably. The ministries of the empire were counting on the continued increase in fiscal revenues, which had increased. in order to alleviate the current financial constraints.

Despite the fact that in recent years the financial revenues of the empire have been increasing year by year, in 1865. The central government's revenue budget is already as high as 440 million won.

However, for an empire that is developing rapidly, this money is still not enough to spend!

What does it mean that the budget of revenue was accompanied by a budget of expenditure, which in 1865 was 450 million? It means that there is still a fiscal deficit of 10 million.

In the 1865 budget, military spending was still the lion's share!

The military budget of 135 million accounts for 30.7 percent of the total fiscal expenditure, and although this proportion has been declining year after year, military spending is still the largest fiscal expenditure of the empire.

The increase in the total military expenditure is mainly due to the gradual expansion of the size of the army, and then the Imperial Army is being equipped with new rifles, artillery, cavalry and other technical arms on a large scale, and the proportion of technical arms such as artillery and cavalry is further expanded, and the Navy's comprehensive ironclad ship plan is even more costly!

As a result, the total amount of military spending is still gradually rising!

Except for military spending, most of the other funds are divided among various departments!

Then it is worth mentioning that whether it is military expenses or administrative expenses on the cabinet side, most of this money is actually used to pay personnel salaries.

The bulk of military spending is to pay salaries to soldiers, and administrative expenses are naturally used to pay salaries to state employees!

Personnel salary expenses, no matter what era, what system of the country, is the bulk of fiscal expenditure!

In addition to personnel salaries, others are some infrastructure investment, such as some water conservancy projects, urban roads and bridges.

A country's expenses in all aspects are very large, use a little here, use a little there, and in the end it adds up to hundreds of millions.

In this case, both the military and the cabinet ministries hope that the more taxes they have, the better!

For example, the current Jiang Daoquan hopes to be able to build several colleges and universities after 1866, and the construction of colleges and universities is very expensive, although the existing education funds have been a lot, but they have already been predetermined, if you want to strive for the establishment of some universities, then you need more financial support.

And just when the top political leaders of the empire were widely concerned about the industrial and commercial tax reform, on November 6, a merchant ship flying the red flag and the golden dragon Tulan Zhutu sailed into the port of Honolulu in the Kingdom of Hawaii!

This is a transport ship belonging to the Pacific Trading Company of the Chinese Empire, named 'Yuxiang', which is a steam-sail hybrid transport ship, with a small tonnage, only about 1,300 tons, but it is a typical deep-water ocean-going vessel.

The Imperial Pacific Trading Company is a typical ordnance trading company, and its transport ships are naturally loaded with guns and cannons.

The Yuxiang is scheduled to go to the West Coast of the United States, and it is loaded with revolvers and shotguns developed and produced by the domestic Royal Arms Company for the North American civilian weapons market.

Although the American Civil War is over, the empire has lost the huge orders of the American military, but it does not mean that the empire will give up the American arms market.

When the Yuxiang was anchored in the port of Honolulu, they found some accidents, because they found that there were many people in the port who asked for help from them, these people had yellow skin, black eyes and black hair, and they had not yet run over when they were shouting for help, and a number of military police arrived on the shore, and then directly arrested those who called for help on the spot, and killed one person on the spot in the process of arrest.

This matter directly attracted the attention of the crew of the Yuxiang and the two naval officers accompanying the ship, no matter what the people on the shore were arrested, but no matter what, they are all Chinese people, the crew on the Yuxiang naturally could not sit idly by, and immediately several people went ashore to negotiate! (To be continued.) )