Chapter 7 Section 6 Land Tax and Fangtian Average Tax Law in the Song Dynasty

There are two kinds of cultivated land in the Song Dynasty, one is private land and the other is official land.Mintian refers to the private land of landlords and self-cultivating farmers, while official land refers to land owned by the state or the emperor.Official fields include Tuntian (field for military food), camp field (field for civilian military food), job field (field for supplementing officials' salaries), school field (field for school running funds), and warehouse field (field for storage and relief) ), public land (fields managed by central or local officials, such as official villages), etc.Among the total cultivated land in the Song Dynasty, official land accounted for about 1/10, and private land accounted for about 9/10.

There are five types of land tax in the Song Dynasty. One is the tax on public land, that is, the rent collected from official land such as Guanzhuang, Tuntian, and Xuetian.Official land is generally cultivated by farmers, and the state collects official rent (tenant rent), which accounts for about 1/3 of the harvest.In addition to the rent, the general land tax must be paid.Taken together, the endowment of official land is about 50%.The second is the tax of the people's land, that is, the land tax of the people's private land.In the Song Dynasty, tithe was generally used as the official Fu.The third is the Fu of the city, which is the house tax and land tax levied on urban residents.The fourth is the fu of miscellaneous changes, which are local specialties levied from various places, which are harsh taxes other than the regular fu.The fifth is the Fu of Dingkou, which is the money and rice for Ding men (20-60 years old) in the southern region.

The collection of land tax is based on the number of acres of land, and the number of acres of land is divided into several grades according to the quality of the land, and the tax amount per mu is determined according to the grades.The land tax in the Song Dynasty still followed the two-tax law, which was paid twice in summer and autumn. The summer tax was levied on June 1, and the tax amount was calculated in money.The autumn tax is levied on October 1st, and it is calculated in meters.In the early Song Dynasty, the land tax was set equally according to the middle and lower classes. The summer tax money for one mu of Zhongtian was four cents, and the autumn rice was eight liters.The summer tax is three cents for an acre of farmland, and the autumn rice is seven liters and four cents.

There are fixed types of land tax payments. For example, the summer tax is mainly for collecting silk, which is used for military clothing and official clothing; the autumn tax is mainly for collecting grain, which is used for food for the army and the people; Autumn seedlings, indicating that the requisition is autumn grain.Although there are prescribed types of taxation, the government can change the type of collection according to the needs of the time. This is the so-called "change" method.According to regulations, when changing varieties, they must be equal in weight or value, but this principle is not followed in actual "changing", and "changing" has become a means for the government to use price fluctuations to collect people's wealth.For example, at the beginning of the Western Shu Dynasty, the tax money of 300 Wen was equivalent to one bolt of silk, and three horses of silk was equivalent to 150 Yuan of grass (at that time, 10 Wei of grass was equivalent to 20 Wen of money).At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the price of grass rose to 150 renminbi, but the government still collected money from the common people at the ratio of 300 renminbi to fold a piece of silk and 150 renminbi to the grass. You have to pay 22,500 yuan, and "the tax money is lost from three hundred to twenty-three thousand" ("Song History·Shihuo No. 2"), an increase of more than 70 times.

In addition, the land tax should be paid locally according to the regulations, but the government often "uses the surplus to make up for the deficiency" as an excuse to let the people transport the confiscated items from one place to another, and from nearby to far away. This is the so-called "branch transfer". .The expenses required for the transfer shall be fully borne by the taxpayer.Those who don't want to transfer can pay money, which is called "dao li foot price".In order to avoid the suffering of long-distance transportation and pay the "foot price in the road", the common people often go to the designated tax and grain delivery places to buy and pay grain.Local officials often exploited the people in the name of Zhiyi, and forced the people to pay the "daoli foot price" for the tax and grain that could have been stored nearby, until the Zhiyi foot price was incorporated into the regular tax collection.

In addition to branch transfer and conversion, the land tax in the Song Dynasty also had various other additions, such as the head money in the nature of handling fees, the righteous storehouse tax called grain storage and preparation for shortages, and the farm implement money and cattle leather tendon horn tax inherited from the Five Dynasties.In the Song Dynasty, the two taxes were levied on the basis of mu, which should be said to be more reasonable, but the big landlords and big bureaucrats used various means to hide their property and land, and as a result, most of the heavy burden fell on the poor people.According to records, the number of paid land in the Song Dynasty accounted for only 3/10 of the total land, and those who did not pay taxes accounted for 7/10. Although this figure is not necessarily accurate, it does reflect the serious phenomenon of bureaucratic landlords evading taxes in the Song Dynasty.

During the Xining period of Emperor Shenzong of Song Dynasty (1068-1077 A.D.), Wang Anshi was the chancellor. In view of the uneven taxes and servitude at that time, the sharp drop in taxes, and the poor and weak state of the country, he decided to sort out the land tax, and promulgated the Fangtian Average Tax Law in 1072 A.D. .The content of the so-called square field average tax law is: take the east, west, north, south, and thousand steps as one side, which is 41 hectares, 66 mu, and 160 steps.Every September, the government sends people to measure the land in blocks. According to the quality of the land, that is, the fertility, the fields are divided into five classes, and taxes are paid by classes.The Fangtian Average Tax Law was implemented for 13 years from 1072 AD to 1085 AD, and cleared 2,484,349 hectares of land, accounting for 54% of the 4,616,556 hectares of cultivated land at that time.The purpose of square field average tax is to equalize the land tax, so that the merged households who occupy a large amount of land pay taxes according to the actual amount of land they occupy, so as to implement the principle of taxation based on assets for those with more land and less tax.In spite of the malpractice of officials and the inaccurate division of land and other disadvantages in the process of Fangtian, it played a certain role in equalizing the tax and increasing the income of the country's land tax.

The Fangtian average tax law violated the interests of big bureaucrats and big landlords, so they met with fierce opposition. In 1085, after the death of Song Shenzong, who supported Wang Anshi's reform, the Fangtian Equal Tax Law was abolished. Although Wang Anshi's reform failed, the trend of land taxation based on taxation has not changed.In the Southern Song Dynasty (1142 A.D.), the Jingjie Law was established, stipulating that a family with a field should draw the shape and color of its land, and draw its surroundings to create a land inventory. Figure Zhengjing circles, levy land Fu. In 1264, the method of pushing and sorting by the economic circle was created to determine the tax color of the people's fields, and the atlas was included as the basis for taxation.There is also a fish scale book that is arranged and drawn in order according to the land shape (because the land map is shaped like a fish scale, it is called a fish scale book).Later, the Liao Dynasty also passed the inspection of land and household registration; the Jin regime also adopted measures such as "recovering land", "passing inspections", and "pushing out" to send officials to the whole country to check land, verify property, and determine wealth and poverty for taxation.

Compared with the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the taxation management organization in the Song Dynasty also changed.The central taxation management agency is the Three Division Envoys, also known as the Ministry of Finance.It includes three parts: Salt and Iron, Duzhi, and Hubu.After Wang Anshi's reform, the three divisions were dismissed, and most of their powers were transferred to the Ministry of Household Affairs.At the grassroots level, the township officials, household heads, and township scribes supervised the collection of taxes.The accounting system for taxes and payments in the Song Dynasty was stricter.The three divisions have to prepare accounting books every year, count the income and expenditure of the world's wealth, and report it to the emperor.Balance taxation and expenditure activities through the supervision of accounting.In the later Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the central taxation management agency was the Ministry of Households, and the local administrative agencies at all levels were also tax collection management agencies. The chief executive and his subordinate officials and agencies were specifically responsible for tax collection and management.