Chapter 32 Two Tax Laws: Crisis and Rescue

It is said that Yang Yan has three major advantages: first, he is handsome; second, he writes beautiful articles; third, he is good at financial management.Therefore, the history books did not hesitate to praise him: "beautiful man, strong character, and magnificent writing", "has a good manner, is well-versed in literature, and has long lost the reputation of the time", "the disadvantages of saving the time are quite commendable." Voice". ("Old Tang Book·Yang Yan Biography") During the Daizong era, Yang Yan won the appreciation of Yuan Zai, the prime minister in power, by virtue of the first two advantages, and was highly valued. Unfortunately, after Yuan Zai's downfall, Yang Yan was relegated to Daozhou (now Dao County, Hunan Province) far away from Emperor Shangao.It wasn't until Dezong came to the throne that his life suddenly jumped to an unprecedented peak.At the same time, his third advantage has also come into play.

As soon as Yang Yan became prime minister, the first thing he solved was the problem of the emperor's "little treasury". In Chinese history, the emperors of all dynasties have their own small treasury, which is mainly used for some extra expenses of the court and royal family.Under normal circumstances, the money in the small treasury is limited, and the emperor has to live on his fingers. If he is not careful and spends a lot of money, the emperor will inevitably become a "moonlight clan".Therefore, most emperors would find ways to expand the income of small treasuries.If the emperor is wise, he is often more restrained in this aspect. If he encounters a fatuous and extravagant emperor, the treasury of the court will suffer--the small treasury will be spent from the treasury. Anyway, the world belongs to me. How do I love it? You can dig as much as you want, no one can control it!

In the Tang Dynasty, the imperial treasury was named "Zuo Zang", and the small treasury in the palace was named "Daying".At the beginning of the founding of the country, the Li Tang court established a system to implement very strict supervision of the treasury.Every spring, summer, autumn and winter, the treasury department (Taifu Temple) in charge of Zuozang will check and inspect the gold and silk handed in from various places in batches, and then register them all in the warehouse. Yes, to prevent corruption.Therefore, in the more than 100 years before the Anshi Rebellion, Zuozangku and Dayingku were clearly separated, and generally there would be no phenomenon of the emperor messing around.

However, by the time of Su and Dai, everything was messed up. The problem first came from the arrogant and domineering generals in the court.These people think that they have made great contributions to the country, and they have a lot of soldiers in their hands, so they use Zuo Zangku as their family's cash machine, and they come here to withdraw money every now and then, without even giving a receipt. In the face of these unscrupulous warlords, the officials who manage the treasury dare not speak out.Wu Qi, then the National Financial Director (Du Zhi Envoy) was very troubled by this. In desperation, he had to move all the gold and silk in the left treasury into the Daying Treasury in the palace, and handed it over to the eunuchs for management.As a result, the warlord's claws were beyond reach, but unfortunately, the national wealth fell into the eunuch's pocket in a blink of an eye.During the more than 20 years of the Su and Dai dynasties, there were more than 300 eunuchs who had the power to get involved in Dayingku.Whether it is the Ministry of Treasury or the Audit Office, no one knows how much gold and silk these more than 300 eunuchs have removed from the treasury, nor do they know how much the country's annual fiscal revenue is.

In addition to the vicious warlords and eunuchs guarding themselves, there is also an invisible hand that often comes in and out of the inner treasury, and it is more natural and justified than the former two. Whose hand is that? Of course it's the emperor's. In the past, when there was a clear distinction between the internal and external treasuries, the emperor would sometimes fall into the embarrassment of being shy.It’s all right now, when you don’t have money to spend, you don’t need to talk to Du Zhi Shi, just reach out to Daying Ku, and get as much as you want, it’s convenient, quick, time-saving and labor-saving, it’s really enjoyable!

When Yang Yan came to power, what was in front of him was such a rotten situation. He knew that if we did not start with the consolidation and supervision of the treasury, it would be impossible to manage the state's finances. At the end of the fourteenth year of Dali, Yang Yan solemnly proposed to Emperor Dezong Li Shi: "Wealth is the foundation of the country and the lifeblood of the people. One of the keys to the rise and fall of the country and the safety of the court lies in how to manage the country's fiscal revenue. Therefore, all dynasties have appointed important ministers to take charge, but even so, it is still impossible to completely avoid the situation of material loss and unclear accounts. Nowadays, the treasury is controlled by eunuchs. How much income, how much expenditure, surplus or deficit situation every year, the dynasty The ministers of the Central Committee are all ignorant, and the political malpractice is nothing more serious than this! The minister suggested that from now on, the management and supervision of the treasury should be handed over to the relevant departments. As for the needs of the palace, it can be listed every year The budget will be allocated in full from the national treasury to ensure that the palace will not be in short supply. Only in this way can we talk about financial governance."

Emperor Dezong readily accepted Yang Yan's suggestion, and issued an imperial edict on the same day, announcing that from now on, all financial revenues would be allocated to Zuo Zangku, and only three to five thousand bolts of high-quality silk and satin should be selected every year to be sent as royal expenses. Daying library. In the first month of the first year of Jianzhong (780 A.D.), Yang Yan proposed another major financial reform measure, completely abolishing the "Zenyong Adjustment Law" that had been implemented in the Tang Dynasty for more than 100 years, and replaced it with a A new tax system.

This is the famous "two tax law" in the history of Chinese economy. The old rent-yong adjustment method was based on the land equalization system. "Rent" refers to land tax, "yong" refers to labor, and "tune" refers to taxes. , There are households, there are adjustments."From the founding of the Tang Dynasty to the Gaozong period, this taxation system has been operating fairly normally. However, since the Wu and Zhou dynasties, landlords have been annexed by strong and powerful landlords, and farmers who lost their land began to flee in large numbers. The phenomenon became more and more serious. By the end of Xuanzong's reign, the land equalization system had actually been severely damaged.Under such circumstances, the household registration and field records of governments at all levels became chaotic and did not match the actual situation.After the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, tax collection based on household registration and field mu files became empty talk.Officials at all levels often resort to extraordinary measures to force collections and increase apportionment in a short period of time in order to deal with business affairs, making the registered citizens in the territory of their jurisdiction miserable.

Due to the frequent wars and the surge in expenditure, Li and Tang's central government could not make ends meet, so they had to desperately set up more fiscal and taxation departments at all levels of government, resulting in overlapping functions and overlapping powers of each department. In the end, no one could control others, and the financial situation was in chaos.In addition, the military and political chiefs from all over the country set up clever names, arbitrarily apportioned, and continuously added laws and regulations, extorting money from the people. As a result, the old laws were not eliminated, but the new laws were implemented, and social conflicts intensified.

In such a chaotic situation, the fate of the rich and the poor is very different.Because the rich have many ways to evade labor and taxation, such as becoming an official and cutting off their hair to become a monk, which were commonly used tax evasion methods at that time.For the people at the bottom of the society, it is basically difficult to become an official, and even a monk is not something you can think of.Because at that time monks had to have a certificate of qualification issued by the competent department, the rich could get a red envelope just by looking for connections, but even if the poor sold themselves, they might not be able to get the certificate.Therefore, the poor have no way to go to the sky and no way to go to the earth, so they can only obediently let the yamen and corrupt officials at all levels drain their blood and sweat.

Because of this, the whole society has fallen into a situation where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.Under the double persecution of war and tyranny, the poor people have no way out, and the only way is to escape—flee from the place of household registration to a place where no one knows you, and let the government that forces you to pay taxes every day go to hell! After the Anshi Rebellion, the local governments made statistics, and the results were shocking: compared with the previous household registration files, the number of aborigines who remained in their hometowns was less than 15% of the past (according to the "Tongdian" volume 7 "The rise and fall of household registration in the past dynasties", The number of households in the Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty was nearly 9 million, and only 1.3 million remained in the middle of the Daizong Dali), and more than 85% of the others either died of war and famine, or fled to other places. With the development of the situation to this point, if corvee labor and taxes are still distributed in accordance with the original "rent and mediocrity adjustment method", then the officials at all levels of government will have to repair canals and dams by themselves, and the court and the emperor may end up with Gotta go and drink the Mistral. Therefore, abolishing the old law and promulgating a new law has become a top priority and imperative for Dezong's court. The "Two Taxes Law" came out under such circumstances. The key point of this tax reform can be summed up in one sentence: "A household has no owner and guests, and the living is the book; there is no middle class, and the rich and the poor are the difference." Assets must be registered and naturalized, and taxes are paid according to law; at the same time, rent collection and adjustments are no longer based on "personality", but the wealth is divided according to the land area and asset quota, and the corresponding land is paid according to different levels. taxes and property taxes. The specific implementation details are: 1. All regular taxes, miscellaneous taxes, and miscellaneous corvettes in various names before the founding of the People’s Republic of China will be cancelled, and only two taxes will be levied: land tax (land tax) in the form of grain, and household tax (property tax) in cash. 2. Re-conduct the census, household registration, land and asset assessment, and divide the tax payment levels according to the degree of wealth and poverty. The rich pay more and the poor pay less. 3. The central government of the Tang Dynasty made regulations on the state capitals. Based on the tax revenue in the 14th year of the Dali calendar, determine the fixed total amount that needs to be collected, and then refer to the above two items to evenly distribute the payable land tax to each mu. The tax is apportioned to each household according to the level of rich and poor.But in fact, during the implementation process, all state capitals are based on the year with the highest local tax revenue in the Dali calendar year, so the amount varies from place to place, and there is no unified tax amount across the country. 4. There is another special regulation: all businessmen in different places must bear the tax obligation like local residents, and pay tax according to one-thirtieth of their profits (it will be changed to one-tenth soon). 5. It is stipulated that the time for tax payment is summer (before June) and autumn (before November) every year, so this tax system is named "Two Taxes Law" (one is based on "land and household two taxes" named). In the first month of the first year of Jianzhong, Emperor Dezong Li Shi issued an edict to officially promulgate the two tax laws. There is no doubt that this new tax system saved the financial crisis of the empire. As a major change in the history of China's land system and taxation system, the two tax laws unified the previous chaotic tax system, further rationalized the previous "person-based" collection principle, and changed it to "based on the rich and the poor", thus Reduced the burden of the poor and eased social conflicts to a certain extent.More importantly, through the implementation of the Two Taxes Law, the Emperor Dezong's court took back the financial power that had been held by the local military and political chiefs since the Anshi Rebellion to the hands of the central government. ("Old Tang Book·Yang Yan Biography") However, in the process of later implementation, this new tax law did not actually reduce the burden on the common people, and also produced many abuses: First, the level of wealth and poverty has not been adjusted for a long time, resulting in the collection principle of "based on the rich and the poor". It was not implemented; second, because the household tax (property tax) of the two taxes was collected in the form of currency, and after the mid-Tang Dynasty, the circulation of private currency was seriously insufficient, so a currency of "money is more important than material" was born. Due to austerity, ordinary people had to sell silk, grain or other products at a low price in exchange for coins to pay taxes, which invisibly increased the economic burden; third, under the two-tax system, the free trading of land was allowed by the government, so land mergers became more prevalent , the rich force the poor to sell their land, but the land is still in the name of the poor. As a result, the actual owners of the land do not have to pay taxes, while the landless poor still have to bear the tax liability, and in the end they can only flee.As a result, the vicious cycle of "the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" has once again become a common social phenomenon.Even so, the Li and Tang courts and the rulers of subsequent dynasties could not find a better system to replace it. Therefore, the two-tax law became the basic tax system of successive dynasties for more than a thousand years. The successful implementation of the two tax laws won Yang Yan wide acclaim, and also made Emperor Dezong Li Shi rely more on him.At this time, the chief prime minister, Cui Youfu, fell ill and spent most of his time recuperating at home, while another prime minister, Qiao Lin, who was promoted with Yang Yan, was dismissed by Emperor Dezong because of her mediocrity. Yan naturally became the chief prime minister of the "single government". Career, fame, status, power, everything that should be there.Next, Yang Yan could finally do the one thing he wanted to do the most - settle accounts. What account? Repay kindness with kindness, revenge with vengeance.