After Zhu Cihong's three edicts were sent to the world, Jiangnan, which had just calmed down, became lively again.
This time, neighboring Zhejiang was also affected.
Countless maritime merchants are worried that the tariffs will be too high and they will be exploited by officials of the Shipping Department in the future.
Countless businessmen who run restaurants and shops are concerned about the business tax. How much do they have to pay every year? Will they be extorted by petty officials?
Of course, what all businessmen are most concerned about is not business taxes and tariffs, but the Royal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Because the former two only need to pay a little money every year at most, while the latter may be related to the fate of the entire family, or even the entire business.
Almost all businessmen, big and small, are very excited to join the Royal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, especially small and medium-sized businessmen with little background.
Obviously, everyone is not stupid and understands the purpose of His Majesty's establishment of this Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
To put it bluntly, everyone pays the emperor some protection fees every year, and the emperor acts as a backer for everyone.
It's the same as before when they gave money and shares to the rich and beautiful people and mansions.
But the emperor needs to be more refined.
Although I was excited, due to too many concerns, no one actually applied to join, and almost everyone was waiting and watching.
Because the conditions for joining the Royal Chamber of Commerce and Industry are very demanding, you must first declare all your businesses and how much wealth you can earn every year, and then be inspected and rated by the Royal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
This alone deters many businesses.
Because in this way, their business and wealth will be nakedly exposed under the emperor's eyes.
Then there are the terrifying membership fees.
Anyone with an annual income of less than 100,000 yuan is not eligible to become a formal member. If you pay an annual membership fee of 2,000 yuan, you can only become an associate member.
Those with an annual income of more than 100,000 taels and less than 500,000 taels are considered bronze members and pay an annual membership fee of 10,000 to 50,000 taels.
Those with an annual income of more than 500,000 yuan and less than 1 million yuan are silver members, with annual membership fees ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 taels.
Those with more than 1 million are gold members with an annual membership fee of 100,000.
It's simply a money grab.
The reason why everyone is still excited about such harsh conditions is the treatment enjoyed by all levels.
Even if it is the lowest bronze level, as long as you obtain it, you will no longer have to worry about extortion and exploitation by officials in various places, because if this happens, members can report it to the General Assembly at any time.
As for how the General Conference will deal with it, there is no explanation in the edict, but just because the president of the General Conference is Princess Kunxing and the honorary president is the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, you can guess something.
It can be said that the bronze-level membership of the Royal Chamber of Commerce and Industry is a huge identity guarantee. Anyone who wants to deal with it must first consider whether the matter will lead to the emperor?
Silver-level benefits are even better. Not only can they report directly to the emperor and provide suggestions for business development, but they will also be invited by the Royal Chamber of Commerce and Industry every two years to attend a business conference in the capital, which will be presided over by the emperor himself.
In addition to all the benefits of the silver level, the gold level also adds the following: if an accident occurs to members or immediate family members, someone will always be sent directly to investigate.
For example, if a family member breaks the law, the local government is not allowed to use torture during the trial. At the same time, it must issue a written document to the Federation to explain the case. The Federation will send people to observe the entire process to ensure notarization.
The gold members themselves need to be authorized by the Ministry of Punishment before they can be arrested and interrogated. After the verdict is completed, it must be reported to the emperor for approval.
This treatment is almost comparable to that of a duke or marquis.
Therefore, there are almost no businessmen who are not interested. As long as they obtain the gold membership status, they will not need any backers at all in the future, and they will not need to pay tribute to anyone.
However, until the end of September, officials in various places had clearly classified and ranked the merchants that need to collect business tax in their jurisdiction, and after reporting them, there was still no business that dared to take the lead in applying to join the Royal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Merchants who are required to collect business tax have strict rating and classification standards, and His Majesty has personally sent special envoys to verify land acre data in one county after another.
So this time, officials in various prefectures and counties strictly followed the standards and did not dare to think twice.
What's more, the cabinet has issued a notice that in the future, half of the business tax collected by states, prefectures and counties will be allocated.
Thirty percent of it will be distributed as bonuses to state and county officials, and will be distributed in proportion to their grades.
The other 20% is used as the integrity-supporting silver for officials. Only officials of the eighth grade can have the integrity-supporting silver.
"Your Majesty, in the four prefectures and four prefectures of South Zhili, there are a total of more than 100,000 business establishments of various sizes that need to collect taxes. The lowest one needs to pay one silver per year, and the highest one has to pay 50,000 taels of silver per year.
The ministry estimates that the annual business tax collected is about 5 million taels."
After Ma Shiying finished speaking, he also sighed. Five million taels was a huge sum of money in the Chongzhen Dynasty, but in today's Shenwu Dynasty, it is simply not worth mentioning, and it is incomparable to the tens of millions of taels in agricultural taxes.
"Business tax alone can collect five million taels every year. It seems that Jiangnan's business is indeed very developed and prosperous."
Zhu Cixiang was a little excited. Except for the brothel industry, the other business taxes he set were actually not high.
For example, the top restaurants in Nanjing only pay a maximum of 500 taels of business tax per year, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of net profits they can earn every year.
"Which business establishment has to pay fifty thousand in business tax every year?"
"Your Majesty, this is Meixiang House on the banks of the Qinhuai River. It belongs to the category of brothels and is Grade A. The registered merchant owner is named Chen Yuanyuan. Moreover, under Chen Yuanyuan's name, there are more than 300 brothels and more than 200 paintings.
Fang is the largest taxpayer, paying more than 500,000 taels of business tax every year, accounting for 10% of the total business tax."
As if she didn't know Chen Yuanyuan's true identity, Ma Shiying slowly explained, and even looked surprised after finishing speaking.
"Haha, it seems that Chen Yuanyuan's business is quite big. If this continues, he may become the richest man in Jiangnan."
Zhu Cixi couldn't help but laugh and said to himself, this brothel industry is really the third largest industry in Jiangnan after the textile industry and salt industry.
Zhang Yan on the side glared at Zhu Cixiang angrily.
She never expected that Xun'er would be more enthusiastic about opening a brothel than Ying'er. Not only did she strongly support Chen Yuanyuan, but she would also personally advise her. If this spread, I'm afraid Xun'er's reputation would be ruined.
Zhu Cixiang pretended not to see it, calmed down his expression, and said seriously to Ma Shiying: "Ma Aiqing, the next step is to collect agricultural tax and business tax. The specific regulations are as follows..."
As Zhu Cixiang explained, both Ma Shiying and Zhang Yan raised their ears, for fear of missing a word.
Obviously, both of them were very curious about what methods Zhu Cihong would use to collect taxes to prevent officials from various places from collecting taxes indiscriminately.
In fact, Zhu Cixi's tax collection method was very simple, that is, he did not let local officials collect taxes directly.
From now on, yamen at all levels will update and report the number of fields and business premises in their jurisdiction every year.
Then, the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce will calculate the specific commercial taxes and agricultural taxes that farmers and merchants in each county need to pay based on tax standards. At that time, each county will prepare two detailed lists and send them to all states and counties.
The states and counties will then post notices to spread the word that within one month, merchants and farmers who need to pay taxes will go to the bank to pay agricultural tax and business tax. The bank will then issue a certificate to each person.
Finally, the bank will report the tax payment status of each county to the head office, and the head office will hand over the data to the Department of Accounts. The Department of Accounts will be responsible for comparing the three-party data of the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Commerce and the bank one by one, so that it can clearly know who has paid taxes.
, who paid less taxes.
For those who have not paid taxes or underpaid taxes, the Ministry of Household Affairs will send the list to each county again to urge those merchants and farmers to pay taxes and impose double fines.
If you fail to pay the amount for the second time, you will be fined five times. If you fail to pay the amount for the third time, the local government will send people directly to seal the shop and confiscate the farmland.
Except for this year, agricultural taxes will be collected in early March every year in the future, and the agricultural taxes collected will be the agricultural taxes for that year.
The commercial tax is set in September, and the business tax for the next year is collected. In order to better notify merchants and farmers, the release dates are also unified on the first day of March and the first day of September every year. The first tax payment deadline is January to the end of March.
It must be paid before the end of September.
After Zhu Cihong finished speaking, both of them were dumbfounded. Apparently, they didn't expect that taxes could be collected like this.
"Hong'er, such a sophisticated and ingenious way of collecting taxes is simply unheard of, but in this way, we can really put an end to the phenomenon of officials in various places collecting taxes indiscriminately."
After Zhang Yan finished speaking, she also had a look of admiration.
"Yes, I am afraid that only an eternal sage like Your Majesty can come up with such an ingenious way of collecting taxes." Ma Shiying also expressed sincere admiration.
“From now on, government agencies at all levels are not allowed to collect a penny from wealthy people within their jurisdiction under any excuse or form. Violators will be severely punished without credit.
At that time, I will place an iron box at the entrance of each yamen, and people can write letters to report. Every half month, I will send people to each county to collect reports."
Zhu Cixiang ignored Ma Shiying's flattery and said sternly.
Returning to the cabinet, Ma Shiying immediately called the three ministers of the Ministry of Household Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Agriculture, and explained the tax collection in detail.
Finally, hundreds of clerks were added to each department, and they were asked to go back and start calculating and drafting tax bills for each county. They must be completed within three days and then sent to each county.
Until this time, Ma Shiying finally understood why His Majesty asked him to recruit more people.
Otherwise, with the limited manpower of each department, it would be impossible to complete such a huge calculation work.
For a time, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Commerce, two departments that were looked down upon by the other six ministries, turned out to be the most popular ones.
For three days in a row, the two yamens were filled with the sound of abacuses and the business was so busy that even the lights were brightly lit at night.
There are two tax bills for each county, one for commercial tax and one for agricultural tax, both in quadruplicate, all copied by hand.
One file is kept, one is sent to the states and counties, one is sent to the Ministry of Household Affairs, and one is reported to the cabinet.
For this reason, Ma Shiying had to temporarily remove hundreds of civil servants from the cabinet and send them to two departments to help, so that it could be completed on time.
After receiving the tax bills, states and counties are also very busy, because they need to copy the tax bills onto the notices, and at least a dozen copies of each of the two tax bills must be copied.
A copy must be posted at the city gate and in every town.
The gentry, landowners and merchants in the county were easy to deal with. They basically all knew about it once a notice was posted and a gong was struck. However, ordinary people in remote areas who needed to pay taxes had to go and notify them in person.
Farmers who don't have one or two acres of land and are still dry land and can't pay much tax have to be sent by the government to notify them one by one. Officials everywhere are very depressed, but they can't do it without notifying them.