When the old friend's son came to visit, Fang Fengnian naturally had to go out to greet him in person. Ma Shaoguang was taken into the back house by Fang's family. When he saw Fang Fengnian greeting him at the door of the study, he quickly walked forward and bowed: "The lower official is to pay homage to the master of the ministry. As juniors and subordinates, how dare you bother the elders to go out to greet him? Death crime is a death sentence!"

As Ma Shaoguang's direct boss, Fang Fengnian was able to go out to greet him, which was really a face for Ma Shaoguang.

Fang Fengnian smiled and said, "Ziheng, this is at home, so don't use the officialdom. I and your father are friends of the same age. How old is your father younger than your father? Just call me uncle!"

When Ma Shaoguang heard Fang Fengnian say this, he quickly changed his words and called him uncle.

Fang Fengnian pulled Ma Shaoguang into the house, and his family brought tea. Fang Fengnian asked, "Ziheng, is it hard to get along the way?"

"Uncle, there is a peaceful scene south of the Yangtze River, but after passing Yangzhou, it is a little declining. Several northern cities have not recovered from the war. However, it is safe along the way, and there are no bandits!"

Fang Fengnian smiled: "This is natural. Starting from the tenth year of Shenwu, the emperor reduced the taxes of northern provinces to 30%, which means that local governments will leave 70%. All the money is used to establish local inspection departments to ensure the safety of each province. If the money is invested, it will naturally be effective!"

As the Secretary of State in charge of national taxation, Fang Fengnian was naturally familiar with the operation of national taxation. Seeing that Ma Shaoguang didn't understand, he began to explain in detail the taxation of the Ming Dynasty to him.

Taxes in the Ming Dynasty were similar to those in later generations, and were also divided into local taxes and national taxes, but they were called different. In the Ming Dynasty, the national tax was called the regular tax, including the summer taxes and autumn taxes in various places, the grain collected, and the three major tuitions established in the late Ming Dynasty. These are all regular taxes.

Of course, all the money is handed over to the state, and local governments also need to operate it. Therefore, in the early Ming Dynasty, the central government and local governments had 70% of the total tax, which means that the central government took away 70% of the regular tax, and the local government left 30% for local government operations.

This policy was pretty good in the early days of the State Dynasty. Because the population died in the end of the Yuan Dynasty and there were no landlords in the local area, the country could still collect a lot of money, and the central and local governments could ensure smooth operation.

However, after the change of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty, the country changed from offensive to defensive against Mongolia. Guards always cost more than attacks, so the central government began to gradually increase the share ratio. In the late Wanli period, in order to suppress rebellions in various places, the share system was directly abolished, and all the regular taxes were added to the central government.

It is logical to show that after hundreds of years of peace in the middle of the DPRK, the population of each province increased dramatically, and the population increased by more taxes. Why is the tax not enough? It is very simple. There are more people who have increased their population and studied, and these people do not pay taxes.

In addition to these, land annexation in various provinces, the increase in officials also increased in major landlords in various places. This led to more and more refugees, and the scale of refugee uprisings that could not survive in various places became larger and larger. The court was exhausted to cope with it, and the fiscal expenditure was getting bigger and bigger, so it had to increase taxes and corvee.

It turned out that in Jingtai, the land that "never affords science" in the north had been fully taxed. In the first year of Zhengtong, the imperial court distributed most of the land tax in the provinces in Jiangnan to silver, called "golden flowers and silver", and stipulated that rice and wheat were discounted by two cents and five cents per stone. During the Chenghua period, it increased to one liang, which increased the burden on farmers by three times compared to before. Increased tax at this time is tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst. Although it can relieve temporary thirst, it will endanger life. However, the rulers of the court could no longer care about so many.

As the land is becoming increasingly concentrated and the labor service is becoming increasingly serious, farmers are not covered in their clothes and cannot feed their stomachs. The farmers have a stone of grain, and the tax paid to the court reaches eight dou. Some farmers pay taxes today and borrow money tomorrow, and they can no longer survive. If they cannot pay taxes, they have to sell their children and daughters, but more people choose to go into exile. During the Xuande period, there were more than 100,000 refugees in many areas. During the orthodox period, there were no less than 100,000 households exiled from Shanxi to Nanyang. During the Chenghua period of Tianshun, the number of refugees exceeded one million. In some areas, the population of "more than half of the population fled", and even "one of ten was left to one", and the abandoned land was "less than one thousand acres, and the most were ten to one or two thousand hectares."

The Ming government prevented peasants from abducting peasants through measures such as Lijia, Guanjin, and mountain ban, and sometimes even launched cruel suppression. However, in the refugee team, there were weapons, secret associations, and their own leaders, so the form of exile struggle developed into an armed uprising.

When Zhu Yuanzhang was not full, he became a monk and still could not survive. He joined the rebel army and eventually became an emperor. Ironically, the ideal society he expected did not come. However, for several generations, his descendants also brought the same life of exile to the people. The refugees became the confidants of the Ming Dynasty. They did not become free people under the budding capitalism, but became the continuous source of troops for the rebel army. Small-scale uprisings occurred in Huguang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Sichuan, and Shandong, where land annexation was severe, and small-scale uprisings occurred one after another.

A series of peasant uprisings in the middle of the Ming Dynasty forced the Ming government to make some appropriate political reforms in the early years of Jiajing, and implemented measures such as reducing rents, rectifying taxes and service, suppressing eunuchs, and abolishing the Jinyiwei School Captain.

However, due to the prevalence of corruption and huge military expenditure, the financial difficulties of the Ming Dynasty were difficult. The government "invested 2 million yuan a year, but could not make up half of the money." In the 30th year of Jiajing, the Ming government increased the tax of 1.2 million yuan in southern Zhili, Zhejiang and other prefectures, which was called "additional sect". In the 36th year of Jiajing, it also increased the tax and sects of 400,000 yuan in Jiangnan and other places, which was called "Tibian". Later, there were names such as Jilian, secting, tax deeds, and breaking the people's and bravery. The gentry and landlords had the privilege to exempt taxes and exemption from labor, and the lives of poor peasants became more painful, with more refugees, and more uprisings. By this time of the Ming Dynasty, it was already a catkin in the wind and was shaking.

When the Ming Dynasty was facing an impending crisis, history gave the Zhu family dynasty an opportunity to push a man named Zhang Juzheng to the political stage. As a famous prime minister, Zhang Juzheng loved beauty and was luxurious, and seemed to have no integrity as a famous scholar in the Ming Dynasty. In the words we can see now, we can't see the flavor of the article, but it has the meaning of a practical man. Zhang Juzheng made great contributions throughout his life and recommended the "one-whip method" to change the tax system, which greatly improved the financial situation of the Ming government and left valuable legacy to future generations. The new law that Zhu Hongsan now implemented in Jiangnan is just an enhanced version of Zhang Juzheng's "one-whip method".

To put it bluntly, the one-whip method is to summarize the corvee labor and grain that should be paid in each township and li to prefectures and counties, and the prefectures and counties to the prefectures, so that each stone of grain is equivalent to silver, and each corvee labor is equivalent to silver, directly pay silver. The original complicated names are unified under one entry, so it is called a whip.

Zhang Juzheng's reform greatly alleviated the financial crisis in the middle and late Ming dynasties, but there was a drawback in the Chinese officialdom, which was that people died and political expiration. After Zhang Juzheng's death, the reform he advocated was all deposed by his good disciple Emperor Wanli, Zhang Juzheng was also confiscated and his son was forced to death.

At the end of the Wanli period, in order to raise military expenses to resist the Invasion of the Later Jin Dynasty and suppress the peasant uprising, the court issued additional taxes to land tax. It was mainly divided into Liao levies, suppression and training, collectively known as the "three taxes". Liao levies were added to land taxes to raise the Liaodong military levies. In the 46th year of Wanli, three cents and five cents per mu were added. After the taxes were added to the levies to reach more than ten cents per mu. Suppression was added to the military pay for land taxes to suppress the peasant uprising. In the tenth year of Chongzhen, the amount of grain was added to Liuhe, and eight cents per stone was charged, and another one cent of silver was charged for one year, but it was cancelled at the end. The tax was added to the taxes to land taxes to suppress the peasant uprising. In the 12th year of Chongzhen, one cent of silver was charged per mu.

At this time, the national finance and credit of the Ming Dynasty had completely gone bankrupt, and the collection of the three major salaries was just a matter of drinking poison to quench thirst. It was only a matter of time before the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

When local governments collect regular taxes for the country, they often charge fees. There is no way to do so. Local officials are also people, and they also need money to maintain the operation of local governments. Therefore, various bad rules emerged in various places, such as fire consumption, levy, donation, common deeds, etc., which can all be attributed to local taxes. In the late Ming Dynasty, local taxes collected by local governments were even several times the regular taxes of the court.

After Zhu Hongsan became emperor in Guangzhou, he knew very well about this tax system in the Ming Dynasty. Zhu Hongsan initially planned to use the butcher knife of the Qing Dynasty and bandits to kill all the scholars and officials in Jiangnan, and then acted as a savior to liberate them, just like the northern provinces.

But people's calculations are not as good as God's calculations. Zhu Hongsan forgot that the guys under his command were also scholars and officials. As Zhu Hongsan's power grew, he naturally had to accept the scholars of Jiangnan who fled south. These people were urging Zhu Hongsan to make an early Northern Expedition for their own purposes. At that time, Li Chengdong and Jin Shenghuan were in a good state of anti-Qing, so Zhu Hongsan was so angry that he gave up the strategy of making money in Guangzhou that year, and instead attacked everywhere to grab territory.

The military generation submission made Zhu Hongsan's Northern Expedition very smooth. The landlords in Jiangnan were liberated by Zhu Hongsan before they were killed by the Qing Dynasty. Zhu Hongsan was in a dilemma. If they wanted long-term stability, they had to solve the problem of land annexation. The culprits of land annexation, the big landlords in Jiangnan, stood in the right team in the anti-Qing Dynasty. Zhu Hongsan could not kill them with the Qing Dynasty, so in order to solve the financial crisis, Zhu Hongsan had to use the new policy move.

The implementation of the new policy greatly alleviated the central government's fiscal crisis and also slowed down land annexation in various parts of Jiangnan. Zhu Hongsan, who had money, began to restore the northern economy. The first step was to reduce the fiscal share in various places, and reduce the share of provinces that were not seriously damaged such as Shandong and Hebei to 30%. In the severely affected areas of Henan and Shaanxi, taxes were directly reduced and a large amount of funding was also given.

Of course, part of this money will be embezzled by local officials, but some of it is still used in practice, so local areas have begun to recover slowly, and public security in northern provinces has also improved greatly.
Chapter completed!