Although the emperor was angry, Cheng Guoxiang did not panic and said very calmly:
"Your Majesty, this issue of IOUs is not new to this year."
"Since the Jiajing period, IOUs have been popular in several provinces south of the Yangtze River. Until the Wanli period, the imperial court could no longer control them!"
"Whenever they have to pay taxes, they always have various reasons to default on it, and the IOUs issued are also well-founded. The dates vary from family to family, some are one or two years, some are three to five years!"
"Yan said that when they became richer, the tax officials from the imperial court would come to collect the IOUs they issued, but by then, either one of their houses would be on fire, or that other house would be robbed!"
"In short, this is a one-sentence response. Everyone is living in poverty, and they are too poor to expose the blame. Please ask the court to give you a grace period of three to five years!"
"It's not that the imperial court has never recovered the tax, but due to various resistances, it ended up being nothing. The imperial court was simply unable to recover the arrears of taxes."
"It has been going on for decades now. The trend has become more and more intense, and more and more wealthy gentry have issued IOUs. It has become a common tactic for them to evade taxes."
After Zhu Youxiao heard this, he suddenly understood. No wonder they said that the wealthy gentry in Jiangnan resisted taxes. It turned out that their method was to keep credit.
He also always wondered in later generations, if the ministers just ignored it, how could the emperor ignore such an act of obvious resistance?
After all, this tax resistance is not tax evasion, it is blatant rebellion against the imperial court.
Now after listening to Cheng Guoxiang's explanation, he finally understood what this "resistance" was.
"Is the resistance that Da Situ mentioned some ministers in the DPRK and the local officials?"
Cheng Guoxiang bowed quickly and said excitedly:
"Your Majesty, your Majesty, has hit the nail on the head. It is the ministers of the DPRK who are cheating and colluding with the local officials to act as a protective umbrella for these wealthy gentry families!"
"With their support behind them, they wrote the IOUs and wrote the receipts. Naturally, they had no scruples and dared to bargain with the tax collectors!"
"What's even more serious is that the officials from the Ministry of Revenue are already one of them. Letting them collect their own taxes is just a formality to show to the court."
"When the time comes, they will have plenty of reasons to defend themselves, but they still mean the same thing. The tax arrears will not be collected!"
It is difficult to guard against domestic thieves day and night. These gentry and wealthy households rely on someone to protect them. They are so crazy that even the emperor does not take them seriously.
What's more, there are undercover agents in the Ministry of Household Affairs, and every move of the imperial court is under their eyes. Some things may not be officially implemented yet, and may already be known to the whole country.
The officialdom of the Ming Dynasty was like a sieve, with various interest groups and parties mixed together. The water was really deep, and most people who dared to enter would drown in it.
Zhu Youxiao also knew that the main reason why the tax revenue this year was so much less than in previous years was actually because of him.
As soon as he ascended the throne, he slaughtered many people in the capital and made rivers of blood flow. There were countless people who confiscated their homes and exterminated their clans.
It can be said that the power and foundation of the Donglin Party members in the court have been basically destroyed. Without their protective umbrella and talker in the court, how could they not feel at risk.
The most fatal thing is that he not only killed courtiers, but also officials as far away as Nanjing were not spared, and many of them were convicted.
Their leader, Qian Qianyi, one of the leaders of Donglin, is still eating pig food in the prison of Nanzhen Fusi.
Every time they resisted and responded, they were rewarded with the emperor's ruthless and bloody butcher's knife.
They didn't know what else the emperor would do to them, but they no longer wanted to sit back and wait for death, and decided to use traditional and safe methods to resist the tax.
If that didn't work, then they would directly block water transportation, so that food supplies from the south could not support the north through the canal, and it would be up to the emperor to compromise.
But they were extremely afraid of directly cutting off water transportation, a method of tearing people apart, and they didn't even dare to do so. They just talked about it verbally.
But there is no problem in playing tricks on this, giving you a shipwreck from time to time, or delaying it for a month or two.
This is also their biggest reliance, which is to pinch your emperor's vitality and vitality to prevent you from doing anything to them, forcing you to submit and ensuring their interests.
You must know that during the Ming Dynasty at this time, the north was experiencing great disasters year after year. Without the supply of food and materials from the south, within March, not to mention the north, even the capital would be in chaos.
This is why Emperor Wanli indulged them and tolerated them so much, because starting from the 30th year of Wanli, several northern provinces were no longer able to produce and be self-sufficient.
In fact, the North has never been self-sufficient, but from that year on, it became more and more dependent, so that in the end, it was completely dependent on this lifeline for maintenance.
"The officials of the Ministry of Household are cheating and cheating. I have heard about it before I ascended the throne. I have long planned to conduct a large-scale investigation, but I have been busy with military affairs and delayed it!"
There was a ruthless look in Zhu Youxiao's eyes, and it was the norm for officials from the Ministry of Household Affairs to watch and steal.
But they are just small fish and shrimps. The current national treasury is empty every year and even the rats are running out. Even if they want to be greedy, they can't be greedy much.
The real bosses are those who served in the Ministry of Household Affairs during the Wanli Period, especially those between the 20th and 30th years of the Wanli Period.
He dared to say that as long as they were inspected, it would be comparable to the current two years of tax collection.
I don’t know how Jin Yiwei’s investigation is going. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack, and it’s really hard for them.
"Your Majesty, the urgent problem right now is not with the officials of the Ministry of Revenue, but how to recover these arrears of taxes."
"If the money and food that belongs to the imperial court are not recovered, the military expenditures and wages for Jiubian and the funds for the arsenal to build ordnance will already be stretched thin."
Except for a few insiders, Zhu Youxiao did not tell anyone else about Shenwu's own fire cannon, in order to keep it secret.
As mentioned above, the Ming Dynasty Hall is completely a sieve, and on the back of this sieve is a large turbocharged fan.
As long as there is a little movement or wind, it will spread throughout the whole world in an instant. Whenever there is a change, it will immediately attract everyone's attention.
In the Ming Dynasty, there were no secrets at all, including military matters.
Enemies don't need to do much inquiring. They just need to be a little more careful and find someone with some status to inquire, and they will know everything.
In history, the reason why the Manchus were able to suppress the Ming army and beat them up everywhere was except that they made good use of spies and instigated the generals of the Ming army to rebel.
Another important reason is that they know the deployment strategies and tactical plans of the Ming Dynasty very well.