When the Qing Dynasty was having a headache for Shang Yi, Shang Yi indeed implemented a series of new laws in Zhejiang with great fanfare.
The first one is to clear the land and rebuild the fish scale book.
The Qingzhang land has always been in Shang Yi's plan. It started after returning from Beijing. However, it was only carried out in Hangzhou at that time. Now Shang Yi has secured his position as governor of Zhejiang and is holding a great victory over the Qing Dynasty. Because of the army's military exploits, a comprehensive land clearing began in Zhejiang Province.
As soon as this decree was promulgated, it immediately aroused a lot of complaints, especially from the wealthy officials and wealthy families who owned a large amount of land. In fact, when the court wanted to annex land, many people would be opposed. It is the opposition of the bureaucratic group, and the reason is nothing else, because the bureaucratic group is often the main member who seizes the land. What the land clearing harms is their actual interests. Therefore, officials who advocate clearing the land often become the target of public criticism, and even It will not lead to a happy ending.
But the Merchant Army does not have this burden. On the one hand, Shang Yi's prestige in the entire army is extremely high. As long as it is a formal decision made by him, almost no one dares to object. On the other hand, the Merchant Army has not been stationed in Zhejiang for a long time. Chief, the key members of the army have not yet had time to purchase land in Zhejiang, so clearing the land will not harm their interests. On the contrary, verifying the amount of land, as a basis for tax collection, will also help increase the income of the merchant army. In the case of harming one's own interests, of course everyone hopes that the merchant army will develop in a better and better direction.
The only family that was both a member of the merchant army and owned a large amount of land was the old Lin family. However, Lin Zhiyang knew Shang Yi's purpose very well and went home in person to persuade his father to take the initiative to hand over the actual amount of land in his family.
At this time, Lin Zhengshuo finally showed the clear judgment of an old businessman. He knew that it was useless to fight against Shang Yi, so he took the initiative to report the amount of all the land in his family. He also returned all the land that he had occupied and surrendered. What's more, the Lin family doesn't have much land, only a little over 10,000 acres in total. They can only be considered a medium-sized landowner. Even if they hand it over, the loss will not be big. On the contrary, it can also be used to repair the relationship with Zong Yi.
With the Lin family taking the lead, other opponents were at their wits' end. Now Shang Yi had the final say on one-third of an acre of land in Zhejiang. Even the court wanted to give Shang Yi some control, so they had no choice but to accept their fate.
Although there were a few stubborn officials who thought their families were a bit powerful, they refused to cooperate with the staff who were inspecting the land, and some even hit the staff. But this time, Shang Yi was not polite. If he did not cooperate, he would immediately bring his entire family together. They were seized and those who beat people were imprisoned and thrown into the mines to work as coolies. After killing a few chickens, the monkeys were all frightened and they all cooperated honestly.
In fact, Shang Yi is not trying to seize land, but to find out the amount of land and use it as a basis for tax collection. Produce more and collect more, produce less and collect less, so that the tax distribution is as fair and reasonable as possible. For some land whose property rights are really unclear, , the merchant army paid for the purchase. The excess land that was verified was also distributed to the landless people. At the same time, the merchant army also invested in purchasing a batch of land, so that each farmer could basically be allocated twenty acres of land. Guarantee their own basic livelihood. However, the farmers assigned to the land will repay it in ten years.
Of course, clearing the land is a long-term task and cannot be completed within a few months. Shang Yi does not have much time to take care of it. Instead, the land department just established by Shang Jun will take full responsibility and let Li
Yan focused on this. At the same time, he asked the Supervision Department to closely monitor whether there was any malpractice during the land clearing process.
However, Shangjun still implements a three-year tax-free policy in Zhejiang Province. Therefore, although large households are opposed to clearing land, all farmers have actually benefited from it, so they all heartily support this law.
The second item is commercial tax.
In fact, the actual commercial tax in the Ming Dynasty was not high. The tax rate of one out of thirty set in the early Ming Dynasty remained unchanged until the end of the Ming Dynasty. However, in actual operation, each place had its own tax customs with various names.
There are so many tax cards, almost to the point where geese are plucking their feathers. Therefore, ordinary businessmen cannot withstand such heavy taxation, so they can only rely on officials, forming a situation of combining government and business. But with the support of officials, businessmen can
He even dared to refuse to pay normal taxes, but ended up going to the other extreme.
Therefore, Shang Yi first banned the establishment of private tax cards in all parts of Zhejiang Province. Goods entering Zhejiang Province only need to pay the Zhejiang entry tax once, and they can pass through the province without hindrance. However, no matter what the background of the businessman, the Zhejiang entry tax must be paid.
, can never be exempted or exempted. The same applies to goods exported from Zhejiang. At the same time, the goods are also subdivided so that various types of goods have their own tax standards. Many tax exemptions that can be exceeded in the implementation of the joint system are also exempted.
behavior.
This item naturally aroused opposition from most businesses in Zhejiang, because they all have government backgrounds and are not afraid of tax cards from various places. But Shang Yi's attitude is also very firm, either accept it or stop doing business in Zhejiang.
Anyway, there are quite a few businessmen actually doing business in Zhejiang. Without them, a lot of trouble would be avoided. However, under Shang Yi's tough attitude, the vast majority of businessmen could only choose to give in.
However, the content of commercial tax is not just that. Another important content is to encourage private capital to set up factories and invest in industry.
In ancient China, merchants were almost always separated from production. The production of goods was basically completed by handicraftsmen based on family units, and the role of merchants was to buy products from handicraftsmen at low prices and then transport them to other companies.
Places are sold at high prices. Therefore, the vast majority of merchants in China are circulation merchants.
As a result, no one will think about how to improve production technology, improve production methods, and reduce production costs. What businessmen do is to desperately lower the price of purchased products, while handicraftsmen based on family units are unable to do so because of their small strength.
If you fight against businessmen, you can only accept the oppression and exploitation of businessmen. As a result, China's social production has always been based on the small-scale peasant economy, and it is impossible to completely separate handicrafts and agriculture, resulting in large-scale socialized handicraft production, that is,
Capitalism has always been developing. Therefore, China’s business practices have never been able to destroy the small-scale peasant economy and raise China’s social productivity to a new stage.
Of course, on the other hand, large-scale socialized handicraft production means the emergence of large factories and large enterprises. This is why rulers in the past dynasties did not want to see the "gathering of crowds" situation, so they gathered a large number of craftsmen to work together.
Generally, it can only appear in government offices or production workshops with government background. In the Qing Dynasty in another time and space, it was even stipulated that gatherings of more than thirty people must be reported to the government. In this case, it was impossible to complete it.
A revolution in the social division of labor and the complete separation of handicrafts and agriculture.
At the same time, because circulation merchants do not have their own industry, they also lack the overall concept of right and wrong, which leads them to have the concept that milk is mother, and they do not hesitate to buy Chinese materials to hostile forces in order to earn huge profits. However, when encountering invasion by foreign enemies,
At that time, they were often the first to defect to foreign enemies. The so-called eight imperial merchants of Shanxi in this era and a group of comprador merchants in later generations are typical representatives.
Of course Shang Yi hopes to try his best to change this situation, and has done a lot of experiments. He has opened many large-scale handicraft factories in Hangzhou. But it is not enough for Shang Yi to do it alone, and he has started
The factory also has a strong government background, and it is also effective in promoting capital development. It must mobilize the power of the private sector.
Therefore, in the commercial tax formulated by Shang Yi, tax reduction for production workshops or factories was a very important provision. Production workshops or factories were divided into five levels of scale as the standard for tax reduction. Production workshops or factories were divided into five levels.
The larger the scale of the factory, the greater the tax reduction ratio. The largest production workshop is allowed to have more than 2,000 people, and the tax reduction rate also reaches 40%.
The main purpose is to use tax adjustments to restrict circulation merchants and encourage them to transform into production merchants. This is the most important step. Of course, the management, registration, production control, and tax collection of production workshops
There are also a set of very detailed regulations on methods and standards to prevent production workshops or factories from falsely expanding their production scale in order to obtain high tax reductions. In addition, it is also necessary to prevent people with ulterior motives from using factories to cause trouble.
There is another important component of commercial tax, which is customs tax.
Customs tax revenue will also be an important source of tax revenue for the merchant army in the future, and now that Shang Yi has opened a trade route to Manila, he has also obtained trade rights between Japan and Batavia, so the establishment of the customs is inevitable.
OK.
In fact, the customs is not complicated. There were similar organizations in the Song and Ming Dynasties, of course called Shibosi. The focus of the customs is twofold. One is to formulate tax collection standards for various commodities. The more detailed and clear the classifications, the better.
Reduce the operating space for staff during operation, and the other is to strengthen supervision.
It is not difficult to answer the first point, because when collecting Zhejiang tax, the classification of goods has been refined, and it can be gradually improved in the future. Of course, Shang Yi also clearly stipulated that the silver settled shall be determined by weight.
shall prevail, and weights with standard weights will be issued at each customs gate.
As for the second point, there is some trouble. Shang Yi is a person of later generations. Of course, he knows that customs has always been the main place for breeding corruption, and corrupt behavior is often group corruption. Once it is discovered, the entire customs will basically be brought down.
That’s right. There are only three ways to control corrupt behavior: implement job rotation and change every three years; improve the system and leave as few loopholes as possible; and strengthen supervision so that once corrupt behavior is detected, punish it severely.
No loan.
Of course, once the customs is established, it will have another important task, which is to crack down on smuggling at sea, and this task will also be completed by the navy.