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 began to appear in several provinces south of the Yangtze River. By the Wanli period, the imperial court was no longer able to control them!"
"Whenever they have to pay taxes, they always have various reasons to default on it. The IOUs written 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 get richer, the tax officials from the imperial court will come to collect the IOUs they issued, but by then, either one of their houses will be on fire, or that other house will be robbed!"
"In short, this is a one-sentence response. Everyone is living in poverty, and they are too poor to take 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."
"This has been going on for decades, and the trend has become more and more intense, and more and more wealthy gentry households are issuing 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. This is already a blatant rebellion against the 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 court and local officials?"
Cheng Guoxiang bowed quickly and said excitedly:
"Your Majesty, what you said is exactly what you said. It is the ministers in the court who are cheating and colluding with the local officials to act as a protective umbrella for these wealthy gentry!"
"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 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 day and night guards and house thieves. 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 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 go in would drown in it.
Zhu Youxiao also knows that the main reason why tax revenue is so much less than in previous years this year is actually because of him.
As soon as he ascended the throne, he killed countless people in the capital and court, and blood flowed like rivers. There were countless people who confiscated their homes and exterminated their clans.
The power and foundation of the Donglin Party members in the court can be said to have been basically destroyed. Without their protective umbrella and talker in the court, how could they not feel at risk.
The most deadly 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 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 doesn't work, then they will directly block the water transportation, so that the food supplies from the south cannot support the north through the canal, and it will be up to the emperor to compromise.
But they are extremely afraid of directly cutting off water transportation, this method of tearing one's face, and they don't dare to do it, that is, they just talk 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 for many years. 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 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 matters and delayed it!"
There was a ruthless look in Zhu Youxiao's eyes. 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 taxation.
I don’t know what happened to Jin Yiwei’s investigation. It was like finding a needle in a haystack, and it was really difficult 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 we don't recover the money and food that belong to the imperial court, the military expenditures and wages for Jiubian and the funds for the arsenal to build ordnance will be stretched thin."
Except for a few insiders, Zhu Youxiao did not tell anyone else about Shenwu's own fire gun, 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 strategy and tactical plans of the Ming Dynasty very well.
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