Chen Ce thought that the industry and commerce in Qiongshan was the most developed in Hainan in this time and space, and it developed completely naturally. It was not the same as Lingao's business, which was developed with the support of the Australians.
"I have only been county magistrate for a few days, and the tail of localism has emerged." Chen Ce said secretly. It seems that this tax issue will cause famine in the future. At present, there is no specific tax sharing system in Lingao, and how to distribute the collected taxes seems to be a troublesome matter.
Although Chen Ce is at the head office of Delong Bank and is busy planning to establish branches in various places and establish primary tax agencies every day, conflicts in the financial system gradually surfaced with the spring awakening and the end of the security war.
As county-level governments were established in various places, local finance and taxation became an unavoidable topic.
Although Lingao County has Xiong Buyou, the oldest county office director, Lingao County has not established any separate administrative agency. All construction and investment are directly invested by the executive committee and have nothing to do with local finance and taxation.
As for the Sanya Region, it is not considered a local government. It is only a dispatched agency because the area originally had no population, industry, commerce, or agriculture. Sanya was a colony established entirely by the Senate.
Most of its output: minerals, agricultural and forestry products, and fishery products are all shipped to Lingao, and the materials needed locally, including clothes, food, tools, and even fuel, are all shipped from Lingao. Investments all come from Lingao's allocation, and operations also rely on materials and cash allocated by Lingao. The Sanya region is completely dependent on Lingao's mother body, and is a complete vassal economically.
But now in the states and counties they control, although each county has a different economic status, each county is an independent economy. There is a city, several villages, and a population of varying sizes. There are fields and a few industrial and commercial businesses of varying sizes. The past model of Lingao serving as the Senate could no longer continue. Each county had a senator as county magistrate and established an administrative team.
With the establishment of an administrative team, local financial issues are involved. The fiscal policy of the Ming Dynasty during the Zhu Ba Ba era was basically that the central government took everything away, leaving almost nothing to the local governments. It is indeed effective from the perspective of centralization, but it is a disaster for local administration. Because the county does not have enough financial resources, the county magistrate can hardly do anything. Even maintaining the basic administration is unsustainable. Of course, without a little bit of crooked thinking, it is impossible to get down from office without some extra-system liquidity.
The disadvantages of this system are obvious to the elders. But how to improve it involves a big article, involving not only the tax system and fiscal system, but also the important issue of distribution of power between the central and local governments. The Executive Committee has recently been holding enlarged meetings on this issue, often discussing it until midnight.
Until a definite plan is worked out, the method of allocating administrative funds will be used for the time being. When each county office director takes office, the Director of Finance will issue a lump sum of circulation coupons at once. The current circulation coupons still use grain as a reserve fund. Based on the allocation figure, the Planning Institute will allocate an equal amount of grain as a reserve fund. Of course, the grain itself does not need to be transported long distances. After the security war, the Planning Institute has mastered a considerable amount of grain in each county, mainly the original official warehouse grain in each county and the grain confiscated during the security war and the land clearing. food. Except for part of this grain being transported to Lingao, the rest is still stored in the granaries of each county. It just needs to be checked in the accounts.
The funds distributed to each county do not go directly to the hands of the county office director, but are deposited into the special financial account of the local Delong branch, and are specifically spent by the county office director. Because local administrative expenditures are complicated, the Finance Director's Department has specially compiled a list of current expenditures. In this way, you can roughly know the amount of funds that need to be allocated each month. This expenditure belongs to special funds and cannot be spent by the county office director in other names. In this way, there will be no embarrassment where the leader spends too much money temporarily and is unable to pay wages at the end of the month.
It is not easy to compile a current expenditure statement. No one knows how much administrative expenses a 17th-century county required every month. However, Lingao's financial expenditure does not have any reference value and has always been consolidated. Especially regarding the financial expenses of supporting personnel, how to arrange the agencies in each county, how many personnel to set up, what the level and salary of the personnel are... So far, it has not been fully decided. Therefore, management can only be relatively rough. Cheng Dong requested that the temporary quota should be tight rather than loose, so as to avoid a big hole that would be difficult to close in the future.
For the time being, other expenses other than current expenses will be spent by the director of the county office within the monthly total, and he can only make savings and not overspend.
As for the revenue of each county: including taxes, fines, confiscations, etc., all are turned over to the Planning Institute and the Finance Director's Department.
This kind of fiscal policy of unified revenue and expenditure is of course very inappropriate, especially since it completely obliterates the fiscal autonomy of each county. In essence, it is not much different from the local fiscal system of the Ming Dynasty and is even more rigid. However, at present That's all it can do. The committee's requirement for local government is "stability". While maintaining local public security, resources from various places should be collected first to support the operation of the Senate. As for economic construction, it is not the primary task of the county office director.
This system has been officially implemented since the end of last year, and it has been more than a year now. Every county on Hainan Island has generally established a financial system in accordance with this system. It's running reasonably well.
But for Chen Ce, he has already felt some backlash during his financial and official travel around Hainan Island. County office directors in various counties, especially counties with relatively high agricultural levels and relatively good economic conditions in the past: Qiongshan, Chengmai The county office directors of counties such as Wenchang, Ding'an, and Wenchang are quite dissatisfied with the fiscal system of unified revenue and expenditure, and strongly hope to carry out reform.
Chen Ce somewhat understood what they were thinking. When he became the director of the county office, he was Bailihou. Most people are ambitious to a certain extent. Even if they rule a small, poor county with only a few tens of thousands of people, they still want to make a name for themselves. The ever-popular business simulation games illustrate the mentality of most people. What's more, all counties in Hainan Island are rich in resources, and there are too many projects that can be developed and constructed. Chen Ce has been to Changhua Fort, a small fortress with only a dozen people stationed there. Although it is surrounded by barren beach sand and there are no resources to talk about, before the Spring Awakening Campaign, he only raised goats on the beach sand. A great success. In the autumn of 1630, Changhua Fort provided 300 sheep to Lingao.
When it comes to investment and construction, it is impossible to rely solely on direct investment from the Planning Institute. There are too many projects that the Planning Institute wants to invest in. With the limited manpower and material resources of the Lingao regime, it cannot take care of them just by setting up "central enterprises", let alone coming here. Engage in local industry. Moreover, the tight manpower gap also makes the Planning Institute less interested in local industries.
Chen Ce knew that Liu Xiang was dissatisfied when the executive committee took advantage of the typhoon last month to pull away a large number of laborers from Qiongshan. On Hainan Island, no matter what is done, there must be talented people. Although he worked hard to complete the task in the end, conflicts between the central and local governments have emerged.
I hope that after Shandong’s population arrives, the conflicts will ease. Chen Ce thought that as long as there was a population, it would not be difficult to develop local industries based on the abilities of the elders. Of course, the financial system also had to be reformed.
Chen Ce said with a smile: "When the refugees from Shandong come, it will be easy for you to raise fish. Didn't Lingao prosper because of the large number of people from Guangdong?"
"We have to wait until the end of the year for the refugees from Shandong, right?" Liu Xiang didn't know what he was thinking, but he just said enthusiastically, "I have some ideas now. It doesn't take much investment, just someone to do the work." As he said, he put Tang Menglong and I told him about the idea of using the coal from Jiazi Coal Mine to develop some small industries.
Chen Ce laughed and didn't answer directly. The topic returned to summer tax collection.
Qiongshan County's announcement of summer taxes caused an uproar as soon as it was posted. Because this year is the first year that taxes have been levied since the Australians took over, everyone, whether they are poor or rich, white men or scholars, are very concerned about it.
Judging from the discussions in various teahouses and wild chats under the trees in Qiongshan, most people believe that Australians will most likely "follow the old rules" and continue to collect taxes according to the Ming Dynasty's method. For hundreds of years, the imperial grain and national taxes Just like that. Furthermore, when the Australians collected grain taxes in Lingao last year, they still collected them according to the system of the Ming Dynasty. They simply improved the collection methods and cleared the acres of land, which was much fairer than in the past. Everyone felt that since the land was cleared in Qiongshan, it was natural to follow Lingao's method. For the powerless ordinary people, it is a good thing to be able to pay taxes according to the regulations without being inexplicably burdened.
However, as soon as the announcement of the levy of summer taxes came out, everyone was taken aback. The mere act of one person entering the property was shocking enough. As for the strange progressive system, it caused an uproar.
Suddenly, in the streets and alleys, in front of and behind the houses, in the halls and courtyards, there were whispers and discussions everywhere. Ordinary people, even though most of them were illiterate, begged someone to read the notice and listened to the on-site explanation by the propaganda team. All of them had smiles on their faces, and some had expressions of disbelief on their faces.
"In this case, we don't have to pay taxes?" Several farmers and other people gathered in front of the notice and discussed, "My family only has six acres of land. No matter what the standard is, we are still ranked first. Class."
"So I don't count."
"Now I can take a breath. We were hit by the wind and were busy replanting sweet potatoes. I have to pay taxes and my money is tight..."! .
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