On March 15th, the first year of Kaibao, the emperor held a dynasty with only one theme, promulgating new policies and regulations. This "new strategy for governing the country", which had been brewing for nearly half a year on Emperor Liu's side and discussed in the Tokyo temple for more than a month, and which had caused repercussions and twists and turns among the people, was finally launched amidst repeated calls.
It is said to be a New Deal, but it is not a reform. It is just a governance strategy that is more in line with the national conditions and people's conditions in response to the new situation in the country and when the country has reached a new stage of development. Moreover, although it was dominated by the will of the emperor, on the surface, it was formed by the ministers expressing their own opinions, synthesizing their opinions, and deliberation. The participation of bureaucrats and ministers was very high, even if most of their opinions were not adopted.
The main idea of the so-called "Kaibao New Deal" is to cultivate martial arts, cultivate literature, and improve people's livelihood. The purpose of all government orders is to benefit the people.
On the issue of reducing the burden on the people, there is a consensus both inside and outside the government. After all, there is no pressure to destroy the country and reunify it. The military damage to the Liao Kingdom a few years ago has also been greatly reduced. Under such circumstances, the Han Dynasty has ample room to Make adjustments to reduce blood pressure for the people.
In terms of specific implementation, it is of course not just a simple sentence of reducing corvee and lowering taxes. After repeated discussions among the ministers, and careful consideration by Liu Chengyou and the ministers, they decided to take the following measures.
The first is the most direct one, which is to reduce the adult's money from one hundred dollars per year to forty dollars, and to increase the age of adultery from twenty to twenty-one.
Regardless of the previous taxation regulations or the two-tax law followed by the Han Dynasty, there was originally no such thing as Ding Shenqian. However, in the southern countries, there were similar taxes, either collecting money, collecting grain, or collecting silk. cloth. So in the early days of the Kingdom, in order to alleviate financial difficulties, the "vampire" Wang Zhang, the Third Secretary, also formulated a "Ding Shen Law".
The original stipulation was that each daughter should pay two hundred coins every year and be a man at the age of sixteen. How could the early Han court win the hearts of the people with such a harsh rule? How could Wang Zhang not be scolded? Moreover, a large part of the small money at that time failed to enter the national treasury, but fell into the pockets of local Jiedu, becoming a legitimate means for them to make money. Anyway, the blame could be dumped on the court.
At that time, there was nothing that could be done. Without making up money to make money, the court could hardly survive. Even after Emperor Liu took control of the military and political affairs and began to carry out the Qianyou reforms, he only canceled those ridiculous miscellaneous taxes and did not take action. money.
It was not until later that the Han Dynasty stabilized its situation in Meng Shu and Pinghe, began to cultivate its internal strength, and prepared to capture Huainan. Emperor Liu changed the ding money to "more reasonable" and reduced it to 150 dan per year. , the age of adulthood was raised to eighteen.
Although it is still very heavy, there is progress after all. For those Guizhou heads, it is also a kind of burden reduction and stress relief. Later, as the situation of the court gradually improved, taking Huainan, Qinfeng, and Jinghu, Liu Chengyou once again worked with the people to benefit the people. After he went on tour and returned to the court in the ninth year of Qianyou, he lowered his salary to a hundred cents and raised his age to two. Ten years old, until now, and the people of the Han Dynasty are already praising the emperor's kindness.
Now, if the tax burden is further reduced, the people will definitely be happy and praise the Holy King. However, the newly grown common people may not realize that they did not have to pay this tax originally.
And for this alone, according to the calculations of the Ministry of Household Affairs and Duzhi, the imperial court would lose millions of dollars in tax every year. This decree is the most friendly to the people of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian. Taking Wuyue as an example, they had to pay 350 qian per ding every year, but now it was suddenly reduced to 40 qian. How could his favor and recognition not skyrocket?
The second is to adjust the quota of two taxes per year and delineate the amount of taxes based on population, land, property, wealth and other conditions. The two-tax system inherited from the Tang Dynasty has a seemingly advanced principle, which is to live within one's means, set the tax quota based on the previous year's income standards, and then apportion it to the world.
This certainly reduced the court's troubles, but due to the concepts of "a household has no owner and guests, seeing one's home is the poorest" and "people have no family, so the rich and the poor are the poor", it seems that the rich and the poor are evenly divided, but because of the population The quotas remain unchanged due to changes in the number of households, resulting in a situation in which the poor become poorer and the rich become richer.
After all, if population mobility is not subject to huge restrictions, everyone is willing to make a living in a wealthy area. If there are more people, the tax will be reduced, and the opposite will be true in poor areas.
Of course, if the two tax laws were just shortcomings, they would not have lasted for so many years without being abolished by successive dynasties. This is a tax law that can be adopted after the country's commodity economy has developed to a certain extent. With the help of this system, the commodity economy has taken off. , social vitality is released.
The tax amount can be changed through the court to change the balance and be implemented through force, but one of the most worrying drawbacks has to be taken seriously. That is the problem of land annexation caused by the free sale and purchase of land. This is an unavoidable problem under the two-tax tax system.
At the moment, the situation is not serious, the population is not large, and the land is abundant, but in a few decades, it will be different. Therefore, in order to restrict this aspect, it was decided to increase the land transaction tax and impose a heavy tax. When buying and selling land, both the buyer and seller pay a 20% tax.
Regarding the issue of land, Emperor Liu also considered it carefully. The so-called sharing of land is not a weapon that can be used against all odds, and with the current level of development of the Han Dynasty, it is far from that step.
At the moment, the most appropriate way is to make policy adjustments on the existing basis, which can also have a great development effect and help the economy take off.
In addition to the above two items, other aspects also reflect the emphasis on agriculture, such as the food price policy that caused a stir in Tokyo. For farmers, the increase in food prices is the greatest benefit to them.
At the same time, the policy of building charity warehouses and increasing public grain reserves across the country, in addition to preventing severe famines, also takes into account that in good years, the government pays to purchase grain from the people at a price higher than the market price, killing two birds with one stone.
In addition, since the government mainly collects taxes in currency, in this process, it is easy for people who lack money and silk to suffer losses in the transaction process. A minimum price for merchants to purchase grain is set on a three-year cycle.
In short, the main purpose of this new Kaibao policy is to reduce the burden on the people. It can be said that the farmers of Han Dynasty have received the best preferential treatment since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Of course, they are also worthy. After all, in the past fifteen or six years, it was through their exploitation that they had the strength to establish meritorious deeds and achieve great things.
