After hearing the results of Liao Yuan's treatment, Chen Ying, the magistrate of Qushan County, looked very bad.
Liao Yuan asked him to give an explanation, a commitment and a time limit for completing the matter.
Facing Liao Yuan's questioning, Chen Ying hesitated for a long time before finally explaining helplessly.
It’s not that the county government doesn’t know that this matter is illegal, and it’s not that they don’t know that tax refunds should be made, but the number of people in charge of taxation work in the county government is limited, and there is no precedent for this matter, and the provisions on this matter in the interim agricultural tax law are relatively general.
More importantly, the tax laws implemented by Su Yonglin in Haizhou are different from those in other places.
Before the newly compiled "Ming Code" was officially promulgated throughout the world, other places were still following the tax laws common in the Jin and Song Dynasties. Su Yonglin only abolished many exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes to reduce the burden on farmers, but there was no change in the tax collection method.
Only in Haizhou, Su Yonglin announced at the beginning of this year that he would implement a new tax law and replace the tax laws used by the Jin and Song Dynasties with a new tax law.
That is, taxation based on acres.
Agricultural taxes are levied according to the number of acres of land, and the physical goods that need to be collected are converted into money.
In short, Su Yonglin believed that the methods of collecting taxes in previous dynasties were too complicated and had many names, which was inconvenient for the people and convenient for the officials.
To give the simplest example, in the past, taxes were collected in kind. Some physical objects that were easy to store were fine, but cloth and the like were easily damaged, and larger quantities of grain were also easily affected by moisture, mold, and corruption.
Once stored improperly, it is easy to suffer a lot of loss.
Take grain as an example. In the past, the government collected grain when collecting taxes. After the grain was collected from farmers, it had to be transported and stored. In this process, due to unscientific and rough operations, the loss of grain alone was a large sum of money.
In the past, the government was unwilling to bear this loss and found that the loss was too great, so it spread the loss to the farmers and required the farmers to add an additional loss fee when paying normal taxes.
This is an aboveboard attempt to increase the burden on farmers and require them to bear the unscientific and unreasonable transportation methods used by the government in the past.
What's even more egregious is that the extra levy of loss money is often not the rated amount, which gives local officials and petty officials a lot of room to operate. They can use their power to levy several times the loss money from farmers to achieve the goal. The purpose of enriching one's own pockets.
Peasants have endured severe exploitation for this, and farmers who are unwilling to accept this rule often end badly.
Su Yonglin has been doing business in the private sector for a long time and has some understanding of this system. He also hates it deeply, so he decided to reform the taxation method.
He decided to take advantage of the early days of the Ming Dynasty to make some changes. From then on, all agricultural taxes were spread among acres, taxation was calculated on a farm basis, and all agricultural taxes were settled in copper coins.
No matter what farmers plant or harvest, they only need to pay a sum of copper coins to the tax collector, and everything will be fine, and they can sit back and relax.
They don't have to worry about tax collectors coming to harass them, and they don't have to pay excess wear and tear fees.
As for how farmers get copper coins...
Su Yonglin plans to complement this taxation system with a strategy of purchasing grain and other crops from farmers in the name of the state and storing them as grain reserves.
That is, before taxing each year, people who buy grain and other crops are arranged to go to the countryside to buy grain and other crops from farmers. Farmers can sort out the crops other than rations and seed grains and sell these crops at the officially rated purchase price. To the authorities.
The purchase price will not be very low and will not harm the interests of farmers. In this way, farmers can get money from the official hands.
After the official obtains these physical objects, they can transport them to designated warehouses for storage in accordance with the prescribed system. They will be used as special crops for national reserves, and will be distributed by the court and used in all aspects as decided.
The cost of transportation losses was borne by the Ming Dynasty government and did not need to be borne by farmers.
After the farmers got the money, they could pay taxes directly with the money when the tax collectors arrived, paying the money with one hand and recording it with the other, and everything would be fine.
Officials can reduce the losses caused by scattered transportation and lack of unified regulations, greatly saving the cost of transportation and storage losses, and farmers can also save money on losses, effectively reducing their burden.
This is the basic spirit of the new tax law.
Su Yonglin discussed for a long time with officials from the central government and the Ministry of Finance to formulate such a strategy and took the lead in implementing it in Haizhou.
However, this set of tax laws looks simple, but in practice there are many areas that need to be adapted to local conditions, and it also requires a lot of official work to solve.
Therefore, after its implementation, it was determined that this tax law actually reduced the burden on farmers, but increased the burden on the government.
Because Haizhou was the place where it was implemented for the first time, Su Yonglin needed to see the results as soon as possible, so local governments worked overtime and finally completed the supporting measures for the new tax law reform before the tax season and were able to implement the new tax law.
Not to mention, the new tax law really saved a lot of things. Farmers who had suffered from paying taxes in the past praised it and felt that the imperial court was really humane.
But the officials in charge didn't see it that way.
They worked overtime to make things easier for farmers, but they themselves were not at ease at all. Moreover, there was still a lot of work to do in the process from tax collection to complete payment, and the tax officials were under great pressure.
Under such a background, it is inevitable to make mistakes in the taxation process, and this matter actually involves a small number of people, just a few villages in a township.
There are only a few villages, but tax officials need to work overtime to search the tax records of those villages to determine the amount of tax refunds, which adds a lot of work burden, and the tax officials are quite resentful.
So much so that after the county government handed over this task, it was still unable to find a free tax collector to handle the matter, so the matter was delayed again and again, and finally it was delayed until now.
After the ins and outs of the matter became clear, the Judicial Branch upheld the original verdict for Liao Yuan, believing that this was caused by the county government's work error. In any case, this was a work error and the county government needed to bear full responsibility.
County magistrate Chen Ying complained bitterly about this.
"The new tax law has just been implemented, and the court urgently needs to see the results. There is really too little time left for us. We finally completed the layout before the tax season, but it is not just as simple as collecting money. The money collected previously Food also requires the county government to organize manpower and material resources to transport it to designated warehouses.
There are really too many things that need to be dealt with, so this tax season, there are not many people in the county government who can handle things steadily. Almost everyone has been seconded to assist with tax collection. In this way, it is still too rushed. , something like this suddenly happened to just a few villages in one township, and I really had no choice. "
As he spoke, Chen Ying took off his official hat, grabbed his head with his hands, and pulled out dozens of hairs.
"I am busy day and night, cannot sleep well, cannot eat well, for fear of hindering the trial implementation of the new tax law. I have finally completed the task, but I still have to face such a dilemma. Are major national affairs not as important as small matters in a township or a few villages? "
In response to Chen Ying's inquiry, Liao Yuan did not answer, but turned his attention to Wang Kangshi, who had been listening, and Bu Liang, director of the Qushan County Renaissance Society branch.
Wang Kangshi and Bu Liang sat in on the entire meeting. The meeting was now over. Everyone's eyes were on them, obviously hoping they could say something.
As the leaders of the revival, they had enough influence to make judgments that affected the final decision.
Wang Kangshi looked at Bu Liang.
"Director Bu, what do you think?"
"I think... Director Wang should speak first."
"Okay, let me tell you my opinion."
Wang Kangshi nodded and said slowly: "I think the first thing to make clear about this matter is that it was indeed the county government's work error that led to this incident, so the county government did make a mistake in this matter. Wrong, it violates the law and requires punishment."
When Wang Kangshi said this, he confirmed the matter.
Chen Ying felt deeply wronged and was about to defend herself again. Wang Kangshi raised his hand to stop Chen Ying from defending.
"Originally, I thought that a little punishment and warning would be enough, but now I feel that this is not enough."
Wang Kangshi looked at the astonished Chen Ying and said seriously: "County Magistrate Chen, you have made a big mistake, a mistake bigger than the tax mistake. Do you realize it?"
