Chapter 15 Financial Work Report
Although Tian Fu is no longer the highest income source for the imperial court, in terms of political status, Tian Fu is ranked first and no one has any objections.
In addition to land tax, there is business tax.
He Xi has put a lot of effort into commercial tax. Generally speaking, commercial tax includes company business tax, special business tax, customs tax, etc.
Corporate business tax is required by every registered company. Take one out of fifteen. Six point six percent.
However, something different now is when the city of Beijing was first built. There are many people, and almost every company or trading company can check the accounts in detail, so there are not many people evading taxes below. But things are different now.
Although there are more than 300 members of parliament now, there are already 10,000 to 20,000 trading companies of various sizes in the Ming Dynasty. This does not include many small merchants who only have a storefront. The city tax paid by these merchants is a fixed monthly tax based on the size of your store and the type of business. This tax is collected by Shuntian Mansion.
It is not reflected in the central government's financial report. But there are a lot of them.
Special business tax is actually consumption tax.
Salt, cloth, ironware, livestock, boats, looms, grain, horses, coal, etc. In any case, products that can constitute bulk commodities all have such taxes, and each category is levied separate taxes, which are different. The most typical one is food.
Nowadays, the imperial court has a monopoly on grain. Even if it is a monopoly, it is actually impossible to block other small grain merchants. In order to maintain food prices, He Xi has even launched subsidies. That is a negative tax rate.
If you sell it at this price, the court will give you money. Of course, this is also why the imperial court is willing to kill all the big grain merchants, because such things as cheating on subsidies are not something that happens now. Naturally it existed in ancient times as well.
The places that the court can cover are all managed by the court, and only the places that the court cannot cover are subsidized. There aren't many.
These taxes are almost directly added to the price. This is also the reason why Beijing and Liaodong are proud of the world in taxation. The things produced by these factories and mines must be taxed so that the Beijing court can get a share of the developed commodity economy.
But overall, each tax is small. The most are just war horses, at 10%. After all, war horses are strategic resources. To control it, if the court buys horses, it will naturally be tax-free. But if other people buy it, they have to pay tax.
In other words, the imperial court has a better price advantage.
Therefore, many people hope that the horse tax can be higher, such as 100%.
It's just that although there are not many horses here in Beijing, the shortage of horses is not to this extent.
Needless to say, there is customs tax.
The only thing that can be said is Tianjin, Yingkou, and Lushun. These three ports are well known to everyone. And Pyongyang, Ganghwado, Busan, Nagasaki. These four customs are newly opened, and the current tax revenue is not large, but Nagasaki's tax revenue will be considerable in the future.
Without him, when Japan enters the designated place for goods, all merchants must go to Nagasaki to enter the customs before they can sell to other places in Japan, as long as they don't want to mix.
Naturally there will be people who evade taxes. But even so, tariffs on Nagasaki, a large market in Japan, are expected in the future.
All in all, these business taxes total about 10 million yuan. In fact, there are also some commercial taxes levied by local governments. For example, the door stall tax mentioned earlier, which is also a municipal tax, is levied by local governments.
After all, local governments also need funds to maintain.
This is not included in the court funds.
Secondly, there is another big head.
That is state-owned enterprise management.
Banks, iron factories, horse factories, shipyards, machinery factories, railways, etc., a series of industries, contributed a total of about 6 million yuan in fiscal revenue to the Ming Dynasty. Don't underestimate this number. You must know that many intangible wealth are not counted at all. For example, the supply of artillery and firearms to the army is just recorded in the accounts and written off every year.
If the number of write-offs is also included, it would be over 10 million taels. And it's cost price.
If sold to foreign countries, the price of weapons and equipment for the equipment army will increase several times.
questionable.
The total income is about 20 million yuan.
But the income is high. Expenses are also high.
Among them military expenses. Six hundred thousand soldiers, with an average annual salary of twenty yuan. The total expenditure is $12 million. This is just personnel expenses. Equipment expenses can be hidden, but other expenses cannot. Therefore, the military expenditure is 15 million yuan per year.
This is without starting a war.
Is this why? After the Battle of Hejian, the family fortune saved from the 25th year of Hongwu was immediately wiped out.
Royal expenses are one million taels.
This is not much for Zhu Xiongying. The maintenance of the palace, some of his private expenses, even his personal rewards to ministers and troops, and some ceremonial expenses are all included.
This money should never be saved.
The rest is government spending. Four million taels seems like a lot. But not much actually.
Since He Xi's reform, the Beijing imperial court has been adding more people. There are dozens of ministerial-level departments including the Cabinet and the Privy Council. And each department has more work than the Nanjing Sixth Department.
Personnel costs plus other costs.
Four million taels may seem like a lot, but in fact it is barely enough.
This does not even mention the most important cost, which is the cost of war.
What exactly was spent on the war? This is actually difficult to explain. But one thing is very clear, the money is spent. Overall, from the beginning of the war last year to now, the cost of the war is probably more than 40 million yuan. That is, the total amount of national debt sold this time.
This is pure war expenses, not military expenses. That is the cost of raising soldiers.
The castles built on the southern front, the cost of fighting, and the pensions after the war. The expenses of appeasing the people affected by the disaster, recruiting civilians to join the army, etc. All the messy money is in it.
Even He Xi suspected that someone was out there. But in times of war, being able to fight is the last word. This account should be rough rather than detailed. It's probably about the same. You can't fight a war and check the accounts at the same time, and you must have everything below to be correct.
In other words, even if war taxes are not included, it is already very difficult for Beijing to raise so many troops with taxes. You must know that there are still many troops in the garrison. These people are left to the garrison to support themselves, but when they are used, they have to give them to the garrison. Monthly money.
It is also an expense.
In short, once there is a war, there will be a deficit, a very big deficit.
There is even something that is not mentioned in the report, and that is money printing. This kind of finance was maintained not only because of previous savings, nor because former Shen Guogong Deng Zhen generously contributed his own money.
More than 10 million taels are enough to support the army for a year.
There is also excessive money printing and the previous small-scale national debt. financial support given.
Although the deficit is large, it can be seen that the imperial family's financial resources are still very strong. Apart from anything else, these state-owned enterprises, in addition to undertaking such high tasks for the country, can also contribute 6 million taels of financial support.
Not to mention, these companies still have a considerable amount of money on their books.
He Xi never thought about draining the money. After all, these state-owned enterprises are very important. He Xi is not willing to lose more than he gains for a little money.
If we look at the valuation, banks plus two major ironworks, shipyards and railways, if this is the case, not to mention 100 million yuan, there will be people who want even 300 million yuan. After all, half of the Ming Dynasty industry is here, these companies are just not very profitable. Rather than worthless.
Even in terms of pure business, lending money to the court is a business that does not lose money.
Not to mention, many of them cannot be stated explicitly, but are very implicit political rights. This may be even more important to these businessmen.
What Yang Shiqi explained was quickly made public in newspapers. For a time, there was a lot of discussion in Beijing. On the one hand, they discussed why the court wanted to make these things public. On the other hand, I am very worried about the huge deficit of the imperial court and the unsustainable situation.
It has been almost two years since the war began.
The two sides have already engaged in a feud, and many people in Beijing have died on the battlefield. Both sides have clear positions
, most Beijingers do not want the Beijing court to fall. They also understand that if the Beijing court falls, Nanjing will definitely liquidate Beijing. I don’t know how far the liquidation will go.
Naturally, he is worried.
