In fact, the unfinished Qi-British War was not what the English envoy Baron Spencer Compton had imagined, and it seemed to have no impact on the entire Qi country at all.

What are you kidding, crossing two oceans, running to Europe tens of thousands of kilometers away, mobilizing hundreds of warships and more than 30,000 officers and men of the army and navy, and fighting a war with the Kingdom of England that lasted for nearly three years, how could it have no impact on the Qi country?

The total amount spent in the past three years on the loss of warships, casualties, material supplies, and certain financial support for the corresponding allies and strategic partners has exceeded 34 million yuan, and the direct war costs paid are much more than those of the Kingdom of England, which is fighting on its own soil!

If we add to this the economic losses suffered by trading companies and merchants who traded in the Arab, Mediterranean, and European regions affected by the war, the amount would be even greater.

Not to mention, there is also the Persian Restoration War, as well as the subsequent war against Russia, the annoying Afghan tribal security guerrilla war, and the indirect intervention in the Burmese civil war, all of which are severely testing the finances of the country.

Oh, by the way, there is also the ongoing war in the Northeast, and the treasury of Qi State has to set aside a certain amount of budget to prevent the expansion of the war, which will eventually involve Qi State.

To this end, in addition to diverting a large amount of money from other expenditure items from the annual budget revenue to support the above-mentioned wars, Qi also issued a total of more than 32 million special treasury bonds in three years. In this way, we can barely maintain our finances from being dragged down by these wars, which will affect the livelihood of the people in the country.

On several occasions, the bigwigs of the household department, who had been distraught by financial worries, had the intention of increasing the scale of money printing and then pushing up the level of domestic inflation to make up for the fiscal deficit, but they were discouraged by His Majesty the Emperor and the Imperial Central Bank.

You must know that it has been less than 50 years since the Qi State issued the Golden Yuan Scroll in the nature of legal compensation on the basis of the gold standard, and it was not easy to accumulate enough credit and promote it to the entire overseas colonial territories and Nanyang domains, and even Qin, Japan, Korea, Northern Ming, India and other countries and regions have a large number of users.

If you are like the Jiaozi in the pre-Song Dynasty and the treasure money in the pre-Ming period, without considering the reserves and solvency, sooner or later, you will eventually lose your credibility and become like the above two types of banknotes, and you will lose your credibility and become waste paper, and you will collapse yourself.

It should be known that the issuance and stability of paper money can greatly promote the development of the commodity economy in the whole country and even the surrounding areas, and can also create a huge amount of wealth for the country, which has a significant role in solving the long-term needs of the country.

However, if the government destroys the original financial legal system and abuses credit, the outcome will inevitably lead to inflation and the collapse of the monetary system.

Since we cannot issue gold rolls indiscriminately, we can only tap the potential internally, and actively open up sources and reduce expenditures, so as to stabilize fiscal revenue and expenditure.

Throttling is nothing more than ending those meaningless wars as soon as possible, so as not to waste national funds in vain.

Tell me, what is the point of using a knife in that poor and remote place in Afghanistan?

In the past, the Mughal Empire fought several times, but they all thought that it was extremely uneconomical, and they could not recover the cost of the war at all.

Although the successor leader of the Gilzai people, Ashraf, relied on the support of many local tribes and escaped the pursuit of the Qi and Indian troops for several years, and did not know which horn Kara was hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan, and continued to lead the tribal armed forces to deal with our Qi army.

However, after repeated blows by the Qi Indian army and the army of the Kharat Khanate, his strength has been weakened to the extreme, and his strength is no more than 3,000 men, so he will not use this to stir up a huge wave and threaten Persia and India again.

Almost, don't add extra consumption in Afghanistan for the sake of the army's face.

Even if the salaries of those Indian servant soldiers are extremely low, and the equipment is not as luxurious as the official army of the Qi State, but maintaining a combat force of tens of thousands of people will cost hundreds of thousands of yuan per month, and it will cost millions of dollars a year.

There is also the war in the Caucasus, after the Russians are repulsed, take it when you see it. In the unlikely event that the Russians defeat the Kingdom of Sweden with their vast and deep territory, they will have no choice but to turn around and continue to tear apart our country.

Even if the entire Caucasus is occupied, what can it be, not to build a colonial enclave there!

In the end, it was not the Persians who were cheap.

To reverse the fiscal problem, in addition to reducing expenditure, then more important is open source.

Well, that is, to collect more taxes, sell more land, open more mines, and let the trading companies and industrial and mining enterprises controlled and participated by the government pay more profits and dividends.

After more than 90 years of development, Qi's current fiscal revenue model has been basically fixed, which is roughly divided into general fiscal revenue and special fiscal revenue.

Among them, the general fiscal revenue is divided into five categories: taxes, government fees, income from state-owned assets, special income, and other income.

Government fees are mainly in the form of revenue generated by the government through royalties or the provision of direct services. There are two types of fees: fees and usage fees.

However, the Qi government adheres to the policy of free trade, encourages industry and commerce, and has successively cancelled a number of concessions, and at the same time has less interference in enterprise and private affairs.

Special income includes a large amount of income from the sale and purchase of land, mines, grasslands, forest lands, fisheries, etc.

Well, that is, what later generations called "land finance".

Relying on the sale of urban construction land and rural cultivated land, the corresponding land consideration fee is collected.

Since more than 50 years ago, after the Qi State began to wantonly encroach on the Nanyang territory, it has mastered a large amount of land resources, relying on land transactions, and its annual income is as high as millions to tens of millions of yuan.

Not to mention, the mines, forest land, and coastal fisheries of the Nanyang Islands have also earned nearly 10 million yuan in government revenue, becoming a non-negligible contribution to government revenue.

However, this area of income is not stable, and it is not every year that a large number of plantation owners and mine investors flock to these areas.

Moreover, if you want to sell land, at least the central government and local governments must invest a sum of money in infrastructure construction for early development, otherwise, the mountains are dense with forests, full of poisonous insects and beasts, and there are no roads and ports, so ghosts will come to buy land.

Therefore, the cost of land sales is often transferred to the state treasury and then invested in a new round of local construction, and the annual surplus is limited.

Well, unless there is a wave of magnificent real estate in the future, it may bring a lot of financial funds to the government.

When it comes to the income from state-owned assets, it is naturally a large trading company and industrial and mining enterprises controlled and invested by the government, such as the Indian trading company, the Bangladesh trading company, the Nanyang trading company, the Daqi Heavy Industry, the Jianye Shipyard, the Daxing Shipyard, the Daqi Imperial Bank, the Hanzhou Industrial and Commercial United Bank, the Hanzhou United Insurance Company, the Imperial Reserve Grain and Oil General Trading Company, and dozens of other giant enterprises, which pay tens of millions of yuan in profits and dividends every year, contributing nearly 40 percent of the government's financial revenue.

Of course, not all of the large-scale industrial and mining enterprises in which the government holds or holds shares can make profits, such as the Central Railway, the Western Railway, the Southern Railway, the Xiangjiang Coal Mine, the Yingzhou Coal Coking Plant, the Jianye Iron and Steel Plant, the Linhai Iron and Steel Plant, and other heavy industrial enterprises.

In general, these large enterprises in which the government holds and participates in the national economy play an important pillar role.

Other revenues include naval privateer revenues during wartime, expropriation of enemy property, war reparations, and government forfeitures.

For example, during the Qi-British War, the Qi navy captured a large number of English merchant ships and fishing boats, and in addition to some of them being directly sold by the navy to Qi merchants at a discount to supplement their daily material needs, most of them were simply remodeled through third-country merchants to obtain the corresponding gold, silver and materials in the form of auctions.

When the Qi navy invaded the Cape Verde Islands, the Madras Islands, Venice, and Malta, it wantonly expropriated the wealth of the local government and the people in the name of the hostile countries.

In addition, the Qi State also occupied many Portuguese colonial territories such as Portuguese Diu, Dammam, Portuguese Mozambique, Portuguese Angola, and Portuguese Guinea.

According to rough estimates, in the course of the war in the past three years, Qi seized a total of more than two or three million yuan worth of "war booty", although it could not cover the entire cost of the war, but it was a big supplement to the government's financial revenue.

There is also a type of other revenue, which is government forfeiture revenue.

It mainly includes fines and confiscation of property for nationals and military personnel who have been convicted by Dali temples or military courts at all levels; Income from administrative fines imposed on trading companies and industrial and mining enterprises that violate laws or regulations; Other forms of fine income.

Finally, there is the growing tax revenue, which accounts for more than 40 percent of the overall fiscal revenue, and has great potential.

After so many years of development, many taxes that were not collected before, and many taxes that should be paid before without explicit laws and regulations, have basically been clarified one by one, and have been listed as collection items, and personnel have been sent to collect them in various cities and towns in the country to support the entire central finance.

Among the many types of taxes, the most important are income tax, sales tax and consumption tax.

Income tax is levied on major state-owned and private enterprises and self-employed individuals in the country, and is levied once a year, and a fixed proportion of the tax system is implemented, that is, the total income is multiplied by a determined tax rate.

The current corporate income tax rate in Qi is 15%. In March of each year, the tax inspectors shall verify the operation of the trading company or industrial and mining enterprise, and after determining the tax, send it to the bank account of the General Department of Taxation in various places.

However, one of the main problems with this system is that it is necessary to pay a certain percentage of taxes regardless of the operating conditions of trading companies or industrial and mining enterprises, and it is not possible to reduce the burden on companies that lose money in certain years.

But in the 18th century, when taxation was not systematized electronically and systematically, how could you ask the tax collectors of the Qi country to distinguish between those trading companies that were profitable and those that were making huge losses?

Since your trading company is in operation, and there are all kinds of transactions in and out, it is probably profitable.

Well, it's a bit simple and crude.

However, because of this, the process of collecting income tax for trading companies is extremely difficult, and it is also the hardest hit area for tax evasion and tax avoidance, which makes the tax auditors of Qi State tired to deal with it.

In income tax, there is also an income tax on personal income, which is levied on income from different national income at differential rates. This tax began to be levied nationwide as early as the fourth year of Hanxing (1674), becoming the first country in the world to collect individual income tax (Britain began to collect individual income tax in 1799).

In fact, if it is more true, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty is actually the originator of the implementation of personal income tax. In 119 B.C., in order to increase fiscal revenue, Emperor Wu began to implement the policy of "reckoning". The "reckoning" policy is the earliest model of tax policy in Chinese history, and it is also the earliest source of China's implementation of asset disclosure.

Business tax is nothing new in the world's financial development.

As early as the Song and Ming dynasties, taxes such as door stalls, class irons, and shop room taxes were all in the nature of business tax.

In the European Middle Ages, the government levied a certain amount of money on business merchants every year to allow them to operate, which was called a license fee, which was also a business tax.

The business tax of Qi is also levied on the major state-owned and private enterprises and self-employed individuals in China, and it is levied every six months at a rate of 10%, which is levied according to the size of the turnover of the tax.

Excise tax, which is currently a specific tax, is levied on luxury goods such as alcohol, tobacco, high-end furs, high-end furniture, jewelry, silk, tea, porcelain, ivory products, clocks and watches, and the tax rate is uniformly set at 15%. The seller shall take the initiative to declare and pay the tax to the tax collection authority, and the tax collection authority may send personnel to verify it at any time.

In addition to the above three important taxes, there are also property taxes and customs duties.

In the Zhou Dynasty, "Dianbu", "Dian" is the mansion in the city, and "Cloth" is the tax on the public house, which is the early housing tax. In the fourth year of the reign of Emperor Dezong of the Tang Dynasty (783), he set up a "tax frame", that is, the house was the object of taxation, and it was also a kind of property tax, which was forced to abolish it soon because it was too harsh and disturbed the people. In later generations, I started to levy housing donations in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, and the Kuomintang government continued to collect them until the Republic of China period.

The deed tax levied with the transfer of property such as farmland, horses and cattle originated from the tax assessment of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In the second year of Kaibao in the former Song Dynasty (969), it was stipulated that the people's pawn and the purchase of a field house should lose money to the government within two months, and request for a seal, which is called deed money. Deed tax was also levied in the Yuan and Ming dynasties.

In the state of Qi, as the people became more and more "wealthy", as early as the second year of the Han Dynasty (1672), the property tax began to be levied, that is, the property of each citizen was inventoried, including land, houses, workshops, mines and other real estate, as well as livestock, grain, means of production and other movable property. The amount of property of each household is then registered and taxed at a rate of 1% (the earlier rate was 0.5%).

Among them, the property valuation is less than 150 yuan is exempt from taxation. These taxes may be levied in cash or in kind, but the proportion in kind may not exceed half. When there are irresistible events such as natural disasters and war damage in the country, the government can reduce or reduce certain taxes at its discretion.

Among them, the inventory statistics of immovable property are determined every five years; Movable property shall be estimated and declared by the taxpayer himself every year, and the tax collection authority shall have the right to verify and impose fines for tax evasion.

Customs duties, on the other hand, are taxes levied on goods imported into the country from abroad. Depending on the importance of a particular commodity to the country, the tax rate varies. For example, saltpeter, bristles, tung oil, indigo, copper, tea, asphalt, graphite, cotton and other materials required by Qi are completely tariff-free; For general consumer goods such as sugar, cocoa, rigging, fur, dried fruits, etc., low taxes ranging from 3% to 10%; Punitive tariffs of 50%-200% will be imposed on foreign goods that compete with Qi such as textiles, leather products, and hardware, as well as some luxury goods, such as high-end porcelain, jade, and pearls.

Deed tax, business tax, consumption tax, customs duties, movable property tax, real estate tax, personal income tax, land tax, stamp duty, tobacco and alcohol tax, luxury tax, all of the above, add up to almost 11 major taxes, constituting half of Qi's fiscal revenue, more than 60 million yuan collected every year, which seems to be a lot of money, plus government fees, state-owned assets income, special income and other income, the annual income of 160 million, proud of the world.

But don't forget, the Qi government prides itself on being a big government, and the ruling base extends directly to the townships, so the scope of management is far greater than that of previous dynasties.

From resettlement to land reclamation, from water conservancy construction, to the renovation and maintenance of urban infrastructure, from road traffic coverage throughout the country and even overseas territories, to the construction of ports and terminals, as well as the huge security of homeland and the maintenance of important shipping routes and bases, all kinds of expenses are naturally very huge.

If special circumstances arise, such as the outbreak and expansion of war, the occurrence of major natural disasters, and unexpected trade disputes, the balance of government revenue and expenditure will be seriously affected, so that the government has to issue additional treasury bonds and rely on borrowing money to tide over the temporary fiscal crisis.

No, in recent years, the Qi State has arrogantly fought three wars at the same time, although with its own physical advantage, all of them have the absolute upper hand, but it has also greatly dragged down the national finances.

When the crown prince learned that the government's fiscal deficit was about to hit a new high, he ordered the cabinet to launch a nationwide tax audit as he prepared to end several wars.

In other words, our country's economy has been growing year after year, and the country is also a prosperous scene, and there is no reason why the growth of fiscal revenue is so weak, so that the government still needs to borrow money to live!

So, what's the problem? ——

(End of chapter)