He has an additional 2,200 acres of farmland in his name, of which only 100 acres are in the yellow list and need to be taxed. Logically speaking, this should be a good thing, but Gao Pragmatic feels that his situation has suddenly changed. Become embarrassed.
According to his thinking, anyone's property in the world should pay taxes unless it is exempted from tax by law - for example, temporarily exempt from tax to promote the development of a certain industry. In his opinion, taxation should not be regarded as exploitation, because it is the necessary basis for the country to maintain normal operations and regulate the macro economy.
Taxation should and must be taken from the people and used for the people. In fact, the ancients did not have such ideas, but they always went astray in actual operations.
More than two thousand acres of land is not considered a small industry. If you look at it outside, this alone can squeeze you into the threshold of a big landowner. However, although Gao Pragmatic also intends to make money for himself, he does not want to "evade taxes".
According to Zhang Jin’s brief introduction, the average yield of these two thousand acres of land is not high, but in fact, in North China at this time, it is not very low, about two hundred The two thousand acres of land are equivalent to two hundred thousand catties of grain every year.
Since the yield per mu is lower in the north than in the south, the tax standards near Gyeonggi are actually quite low. Especially because the Gyeonggi area is densely populated and the food production is not high, in order to ensure the food supply in the Gyeonggi area, the imperial court did not implement a whip law here, but continued to collect in-kind taxes. This kind of tax is very low. Calculating the average tax rate, it is only about one-fortieth of the output. Even if it is 200,000 jins, the tax in kind payable is actually only 5,000 jins of grain per year.
In later generations, the flour extraction rate of wheat was very high, but in the Ming Dynasty, the flour extraction rate of wheat was relatively low. A 60% flour extraction rate was considered good, so if these five thousand kilograms of wheat were replaced with flour, it would be About three thousand pounds.
As for the price of flour, Gao Pragmatic had calculated it before when he got his first payment from Zhang. The price of one hundred kilograms of flour was only one tael of silver, and the price of three thousand kilograms of flour... was equivalent to paying thirty taels of silver. of taxes.
Yes, it’s only thirty taels of silver.
What is the concept of thirty taels of silver?
The pragmatic uncle Zhang Siwei was worried that his nephew would lose face when he came to his villa for the first time as a master and could not even give a reward, so he directly gave him five thousand taels!
This is five thousand taels!
If these five thousand taels of silver are used to pay taxes on Sanshen Garden and its properties, even if there is not even an acre of hidden land, the tax payable can be paid in full for one hundred and sixty-six years!
The Ming Dynasty raised scholars for two hundred years, but as a result, the scholars were unwilling to pay even such a small amount of taxes honestly. When Gao pragmatic thought of this, he really felt sad for the Ming Dynasty.
In later generations, due to the influence of "Fan Jin's Successful Examination" in "The Scholars", there is a view that in the Ming Dynasty, anyone with more than 100 people in the Ming Dynasty was exempted from tax. In fact, this is wrong, and it is not that exaggerated - at least this was not said during the Wanli period.
In fact, Ming Dynasty has a certain bottom line. It has a relatively clear quota of tax-free land.
For example, Jinshi can have 2,000 acres of tax-free land, while the amount of tax-free land for Juren is 400 acres. As for scholars, the tax-free land is 80 acres.
This data was already known to Gao Pragmatic as soon as he was "sensible" in this life. So he had a very rough calculation.
The imperial examination in the Ming Dynasty was held every three years, and about 300 people were admitted each time. On average, almost 100 people are admitted every year. If we assume that everyone can live for twenty-five years after becoming a Jinshi, then under normal circumstances in the Ming Dynasty, there will be 2,500 living Jinshis in the country - this is probably It is the number of officials above seventh grade in the country, of course only civil servants.
The situation is a little more complicated. Larger provinces, such as Nanzhili, admit 120 to 130 people per subject, while smaller provinces, such as Jiangxi Province, admit 90 people each year. There were thirteen provinces in the Ming Dynasty, and each subject had about 1,300 candidates. If we count some more, including 1,500 people, then on average there are 500 people who are elected every year. If the average life after winning the election is thirty years, then there are usually 15,000 people who are alive in the Ming Dynasty.
As for the number of scholars, it is difficult to estimate, but there are usually 2,000 people in each provincial examination. Considering that some of them should not be qualified to participate in the provincial examination, on average, there should be 5,000 people in a province. There are about 70,000 people in the thirteen provinces including other places.
Of course, this estimate is just a very general estimate made by a highly pragmatic individual. The accuracy is definitely not much higher, but it is more or less a reference value.
So, calculated based on this value, the tax-free land for Jinshi nationwide is about 5 million acres; the tax-free land for Juren is about 6 million acres; the tax-free land for scholars is not even 6 million acres, about 560 acres About ten thousand acres.
How much is the total number of tax-free fields nationwide? Five million plus six million, plus 5.6 million, the total is only 16.6 million acres.
How much cultivated land was there in the Ming Dynasty? At least 900 million acres.
The gentry who received tax exemptions because of their studies accounted for 16.6 million acres, or 54% of the total cultivated land in the country.
Is this ratio high? Obviously not high, because according to this data, if the gentry did not deliberately evade taxes, this land would not actually have a serious impact on the economic foundation of the Ming Dynasty. This is also the theoretical basis for a famous scholar named Huang of later generations to conclude in a famous economic history book that the Ming Dynasty was not only not "serious in land annexation", but that the trouble was that land annexation was not serious.
Judging from the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty, the agricultural tax of the Ming Dynasty during the Xuande period was about 27 million shi. Historically, the agricultural tax in the sixth year of Wanli was roughly 26.7 million shi. The difference between before and after is not big.
But the problem is that the gentry are not really satisfied with this level of tax exemption, even though they already have a considerable amount of tax-free land. But maybe no one really thinks they have too much money, so it would be good if they could give less to the court and the emperor - anyway, "Your Majesty is rich all over the world", so why bother "competing with the people for profit"?
As for the specific situation when Emperor Longqing ascended the throne and wanted to buy a batch of jewelry for the harem, but was rejected by the civil servants, that is the way we civil servants should be ministers - to the emperor Yao and Shun!
Your majesty is required to follow the standards of Yao and Shun, which is the ardent expectation of your ministers. How can you live in peace and enjoy yourself and buy jewelry for your woman? If things continue like this, the country will not be a country, Your Majesty!
As for a person like Xu Jie, who originally came from a poor family, why did he have so much land after being an official for decades, but was found out by Hai Rui... Well, well, the main reason is that Hai Rui is ignorant. , cannot take on the important task at all!
But in reality? What's wrong with paying some taxes?
In fact, even if there is no tax exemption, the Ming Dynasty's tax rate itself is already extremely low, only one-thirtieth of the highest. In percentage terms, the tax rate is less than 4%, which is the lowest in all dynasties! You must know that before New China exempted agricultural taxes, the average agricultural tax rate was 15.5% of annual output.
But why is it that with such a low tax rate, once problems arise in the country, such as after the Tunguska Boar Skin Rebellion in history, the country's finances quickly fall into trouble, leading to civil unrest? Is it because ordinary people and hard-working people are so valuable?
There are indeed many reasons for this, and the additional levy must be taken into account. It's just strange, because the original tax rate was only 4%. Even if the tax rate is doubled, it will reach the normal level during the Tang Dynasty. But you have to know that the agricultural level of the Ming Dynasty has improved to a certain extent compared to the Tang Dynasty. Why? If you increase the levy a little, it will lead to chaos all over the place?
This issue must be clarified for Gao Pragmatic to implement reforms in the future. He needs to combine some research materials he saw in his previous life and some of his own thinking with the actual situation he is currently encountering.
But he estimated that one of the important reasons must be that the wealthy and powerful have a large amount of hidden fields!
Therefore, as a time traveler who seriously wants to "save civilization" through reform rather than revolution, he really wants to make his hidden fields public, but this idea was just mentioned by Zhang Jin. Pushed back.
