In the eyes of the outside world, the establishment of the Jiaozhi Commerce Department of Jiangwutang was Li Yuntian's order to stabilize and develop the business of Jiaozhi, but in fact, due to the inclusion of the Yuntun City Bo Division, it means that Li Yuntian has opened the curtain of maritime trade between Jiaozhi and the Nanyang countries.

Because of the background of the lecture martial arts, since the establishment of the Jiaozhi Commercial Division, the local yamen in Jiaozhi have been afraid of it, and no one dares to provoke it, which virtually ensures the smooth development of Jiaozhi's commercial affairs.

It can be expected that with the opening of overseas trade between Jiaozhi and Nanyang, the Yuntun City Shipping Division will undertake the heavy responsibility of commodity exit and customs inspection and clearance, and collect taxes, responsibilities and weights, and there can be no sloppiness.

Although the Yuntun City Ship Division is now inconspicuous, not only the shortest establishment time but also the lowest status among the four major cities of the Ming Dynasty, Li Yuntian knows that this qiē is only temporary, once the overseas trade between Jiaozhi and the Nanyang countries opens, it will become the most dazzling of the four major cities.

Therefore, Li Yuntian was extremely cautious in selecting the officials and officials of Yuntun City, and all of them had to pass the corresponding examinations and assessments before they could take office.

Not only that, Li Yuntian also specially invited Emperor Xuande to send personnel from the Ministry of Household Affairs to the Department of Household Affairs in Yuntun City, responsible for auditing the amount of taxes collected by the Department of Household Affairs, and half of the taxes after the audit were handed over to the Zhi, and the other half was handed over to the treasury of the Ministry of Households.

It is worth mentioning that although Li Yuntian's move seems insignificant, and it has not attracted the attention of the outside world, it is an out-and-out unprecedented thing in Daming, which not only makes Daming appear for the first time as a full-time inspector, but also clarifies for the first time the proportion of local yamen and central household departments in the taxes collected by the local government.

The reason why I say "first" is because the fiscal and taxation system of the Ming Dynasty was different from that of the Yuan and Song dynasties, resulting in his unique tax system.

According to historical records, the annual central fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty was millions of taels of silver, while the financial revenue of the Southern Song Dynasty, which was only half of the southern part of the Yangtze River, reached 100 million taels, which was 100 million taels of silver.

The financial and taxation system of the Ming Dynasty is naturally related to the Ming Taizu, Emperor Hongwu was born in extreme poverty, and he was frugal all his life, not only strict with the usual living expenses of the descendants of the imperial family, but also the lowest treatment given to officials in all dynasties.

For example, Hai Rui, who was the magistrate of the county at the time, could hardly eat a meal of meat a year just by relying on Yulu.

Emperor Hongwu was not only frugal, but also punished corruption with unprecedented intensity, and torture such as skinning and grass came from this.

According to common sense, with Emperor Hongwu in charge and economic development, the treasury income of the Ming Dynasty was much higher than that of the Southern Song Dynasty, at least it had to be flat.

But in fact, the Ming Dynasty, which had a population of hundreds of millions, had an annual central fiscal revenue of only a few million taels of silver, far inferior to the tax revenue of the Southern Song Dynasty.

It is worth mentioning that before the Ming Dynasty, silver was not the main currency in circulation, the main currency in circulation was copper plate, and the value of copper plate was always equal to one tael of silver.

The reason why the annual tax revenue of the central government of the Ming Dynasty has been kept at millions of taels, and the tax revenue of the Southern Song Dynasty is as high as 100 million taels at every turn, in addition to the change in the conversion ratio of silver and copper plates, there are two reasons that are very important, otherwise the tax revenue of the Qing Dynasty will reach more than 20 million taels of silver when Shunzhi, and the Ming Dynasty will not only hide the wealth of the people is not only millions of taels.

The first reason is that before Zhang Juzheng implemented the "one whip law", the tax system of the Ming Dynasty inherited the two-tax law since the Tang and Song dynasties, and paid taxes in kind, that is, rice, wheat, silk, cotton and other crops, instead of silver.

Even after the "One Whip Law" was promoted, only summer grain and cash crops were taxed in silver, while autumn grain was still taxed on rice in kind.

Therefore, the millions of taels of silver that were collected before the middle and late Ming Dynasty were actually other taxes other than agricultural taxes, such as commercial taxes, salt taxes, mining taxes, and so on.

The second reason is the most important, and it is also the key to the financial poverty of the central government in the Ming Dynasty.

According to Emperor Hongwu's custom, the central and local finances of the Ming Dynasty were calculated separately, and the local taxes were directly attributed to the local government, and the local revenue and expenditure did not have to be handed over to the household department.

According to historical records, the annual tax in kind in the early Ming Dynasty could be converted into about 30 million stone meters, and the real tax in kind in the Ming Dynasty was about 15 million taels of silver based on one tael of silver and two stone meters.

Combined with the actual tax revenue of the central government at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty of 2 million taels of silver, and the total tax revenue of the local government of 1,400 taels, the total fiscal revenue of the early Ming Dynasty was more than 30 million taels of silver.

The purchasing power of silver in the Southern Song Dynasty was comparable to that of the early Ming Dynasty, and although the tax revenue in the early Ming Dynasty was not as good as that of the Southern Song Dynasty, it was much richer than that of the later Qing Dynasty.

The Qing Dynasty received nearly 30 million taels of silver during the Kangxi period, and nearly 50 million taels during the Qianlong period, but due to the large inflow of silver from Japan and South America in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the purchasing power of silver in the Qing Dynasty was much lower than that of the Ming Dynasty, so the fiscal revenue of the Ming Dynasty was higher than that of the Qing Dynasty.

It is precisely because the Ming Dynasty adopted the taxation of the central government and the local government separately, and the local taxes were all withdrawn by the local government, which made the local officials try their best to fill their own pockets, conceal, falsely report, and cheat taxes.

As a result, the tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty did not reach the treasury, and the vast majority of it went into the hands of the gentry, which is the so-called "hiding the wealth from the people".

Therefore, the result of the guidance is that the silver taels in the treasury of the Ming household may not be as good as the small treasury of a wealthy man in the south of the Yangtze River, which makes the treasury of the Ming Dynasty stretched thin every time it encounters natural disasters and wars, while those gentry and merchants in the south of the Yangtze River are very rich, and every time they donate millions of taels of silver to the imperial court, it can be said that they have taken advantage of it and have a good reputation.

The reason why the Ming Dynasty's finances will fall into an embarrassment, in the final analysis, is related to the origin and experience of Ming Taizu, Emperor Hongwu can be said to be the poorest emperor in all dynasties, although he stood out in the late Yuan Dynasty, but because of the limitations of his background, his thinking has a strict sense of small peasants.

Because of this deep-rooted consciousness of small peasants, Emperor Hongwu attached great importance to agriculture and suppressed merchants, and in his eyes, there may not be such a class of merchants as unearned at all, and his ideal country is that men and women weave, with abundant food and clothing.

It is worth mentioning that due to the limitations of this small-scale peasant consciousness, when the Nanjing Palace was built, every brick and stone was fired from all over the country and then transported to Nanjing, which cost a lot, but Emperor Hongwu did not think of building a brick factory in Nanjing to supply bricks and stones on the spot.

Emperor Hongwu's suppression of merchants was the most in history, in addition to prohibiting merchants from wearing silk, but also forbidding merchants' children to take meritorious examinations, until the Yongle period gradually lifted these two restrictions.

In addition to the vigorous suppression of commerce, the Hongwu Emperor naturally did not attach importance to taxation because of his contempt for merchants, so the tax formulated was mainly agricultural tax, and the commercial tax in the early Ming Dynasty was 30 tax 1, that is, 3. The 33% tax rate now seems completely unbelievable, and the result is naturally cheaper for those businessmen.

As a result, the overseas trade of the Ming Dynasty was also deeply affected, and the sea ban was implemented under the entanglement of various factors, so that the Ming Dynasty did not have the grand occasion of all countries coming to the dynasty during the Tang and Song dynasties, and lost a large amount of customs revenue every year.

The tax revenue of the Song Dynasty was much higher than that of the Ming Dynasty, the main reason was that it was more systematic than the Ming Dynasty's customs tariff and commercial tax, and the agricultural tax in the Southern Song Dynasty In addition to the taxes paid by the two tax laws, the imperial court also forced the peasants to pay taxes under various names, and the burden on the peasants was far heavier than that of the Ming Dynasty.

Not only Li Yuntian, but also the young Emperor Xuande was also very aware of the disadvantages of separating the revenue and expenditure between the central and local governments of the Ming Dynasty, which would inevitably cause a large amount of wealth to flow from the treasury to the gentry class, but now he could not do anything.

It is not that Emperor Xuande does not want to change the tax system of the Ming Dynasty, but that this matter is very important, not only to change the ancestral system of the Hongwu Emperor, but also to touch the core interests of the Ming civil official group, which will inevitably suffer from the opposition of the civil official group, and then cause social turmoil.

Think about the Tan Jing and Bing Jing given by the local officials in the summer and winter of the Ming Dynasty to the Beijing officials, in the final analysis, they came from the local finance and taxation, which has formed a huge network of interest relations, and if it is touched, it will be attacked by the civil and official groups.

This is also the reason why the Ming Dynasty punished corruption very severely, but there are still many officials who defy the law, in addition to the greed of human nature, the root cause is actually in the Ming Dynasty's tax system, giving those officials their hands to provide convenience.

Even the eloquent Yongle Emperor did not take the Ming Dynasty's tax system lightly, let alone Emperor Xuande, who had been on the throne for a short time.

Li Yuntian knew that for the future development of the Ming Dynasty, the current tax system of the Ming Dynasty must be changed, otherwise in the long run, the imperial court will inevitably be constrained by the gentry and merchant class because of the emptiness of the treasury, which will do more harm than benefit.

The most obvious example is that when Emperor Yongle was in power, there was an imperial history to impeach the two Huai Salt Dao for favoritism and fraud, and secretly sold illegal salt for profit, hoping that Emperor Yongle would investigate thoroughly.

However, the salt merchants of Emperor Yongle who personally conquered Jiangnan several times donated a large amount of silver taels as military funds, so Emperor Yongle suppressed this song.

Therefore, taking advantage of this opportunity to come to Jiaozhi, Li Yuntian decided to implement a new tax system in the remote area of Jiaozhi, and the tax revenue will be nationalized and allocated by the central household department.

Moreover, Li Yuntian held the military and political power in Jiaozhi, and he wanted to promote the implementation of a new tax system in the name of fighting the rebels and imposing military control in Jiaozhi, and the officials in the imperial court would have no way at all.

This is also an important reason why Emperor Xuande handed over the military and political power of Jiaozhi and Guangxi to Li Yuntian, and Emperor Xuande hoped that Li Yuntian could take the lead in implementing a new tax system in Jiaozhi and Guangxi, and then implement it throughout the country.

In order to implement a new taxation system in Jiaozhi, Li Yuntian first abolished the Tian Fu and Ding taxes in Jiaozhi in accordance with the current situation, so that the financial power of the Zhan Prefecture controlled by the Ming army was concentrated in the hands of the Jiaozhi Political Envoy Division, which was allocated by the Jiaozhi Political Envoy Division, and secondly, in Yuntun City, the Bo Division clarified that the central household department and the local yamen each accounted for half of the tax revenue.

The local yamen here refers to the thirteen political envoys of the Ming Dynasty, and the fourteenth political envoys are counted as the Jiaozhi political envoys.

What Li Yuntian needs to do is not only to implement a new tax system, but also to build a new financial system in the Ming Dynasty, which is a long way to go from the current situation of the Ming Dynasty.

For Li Yuntian, his biggest advantage now is the support of Emperor Xuande, if Emperor Xuande wants to submit to the civil and military officials in the court and reign the world like Emperor Hongwu, he needs Li Yuntian to charge into battle for him and establish the same prestige as Emperor Hongwu in the court.