Chapter XVIII Cotton Monopoly

The wealth of Suzhou certainly shocked Wang Shu.

However, Wang Shu quickly recovered from this shock.

He immediately got to work.

Han Yong's policy is not to strictly investigate and deal with retail goods, but to carry out special taxes on bulk goods.

Before the Ming Dynasty's commercial tax, it was thirty taxes and one.

But it's not too easy to collect it.

First of all, Emperor Taizu was not allowed to tax the goods used by the common people.

Secondly, there are problems with this taxation.

There are only two kinds of taxes used by the Ming Dynasty, one is the shop tax levied by the local government, which can be understood as a business tax, but the amount is not too large.

Even a lot of times, the central government doesn't want it. For many small counties, it is like a small town in later generations, and there are only a few shops when they are full.

The biggest item is the banknote customs in various places, that is, the canal banknote customs, and the banknotes on the Yangtze River.

This can give the Ming court more than one million taels of taxes every year.

But this is also problematic.

There is the problem of duplicate collection, and a piece of goods from Jiangnan to Beijing has to pass through several banknotes. Now, because of the decline of the canal, this tax has also declined.

Without him, if you ship by sea, you only need to go out of Songjiang Customs once, Tianjin Customs once, and if you transport some grain as ballast, you can even use these grains as taxes to Tianjin Customs.

In addition, it is obvious that these two banknotes are taxed, but they are only on the two main lines of communication between the canal and the Yangtze River, and there are many other places where taxes are not collected.

The large amount of commercial tax collected in the Song Dynasty was because the field of tax collection in the Song Dynasty was all over the world.

And Daming does not have such conditions.

Of course, this is not to say that there are no other tax gates besides these banknotes.

Absolutely.

Before Zhu Qizhen ascended the throne, there were horses collecting taxes outside Beijing, but all the taxes collected went into his own pockets, which can be said to be extortion and lasso.

Zhu Qizhen was also dealt with heavily.

It's just that this is just Beijing.

Elsewhere in the Ming Dynasty, doesn't such a thing exist?

No, of course it is.

And it's a lot of presence.

In the 80s, there were still a large number of car bandits and road rage in New China. Counting on the clan forces and local forces in the Ming Dynasty now, they are all gentle and humble little white rabbits?

There are layers of blackmail here, but it will not reach the hands of the Ming court.

For such a situation, Zhu Qizhen intends to clean up, but only intentionally.

It doesn't matter if Zhu Qizhen wants to clean up these people or not, what matters is the comparison of forces between the two sides. Can it be cleaned up.

As the emperor, Zhu Qizhen can naturally target a certain place and a certain family, and punish him with one order

Clan, this is absolutely no problem.

But a lot of times, killing doesn't solve the problem.

After the reform of officials, the administrative capacity of the grassroots level of the Ming Dynasty has been greatly strengthened, and there are special people in charge of many things, which is the premise of cleaning up the locality.

It's just a premise.

The first thing Zhu Qizhen has to solve is the financial crisis that he has to face.

To be able to feed the world, more than one million troops and nearly one million bureaucrats are the first things Zhu Qizhen has to do.

Only after feeding these people can you do anything else.

Such as cleaning up places.

This is why Han Yong chose to monopolize bulk goods, and after monopolizing bulk goods, he formulated a special tax rate for each bulk goods, and used the tax introduction system to ensure that bulk goods only pay taxes once.

Yes, a lot of small quantities of goods can evade taxes.

But for goods transported in large quantities, tax evasion is simply not possible.

In other words, the cost of tax evasion may not be comparable to the cost of paying taxes.

And collect it from the source, and include all bulk goods in the tax base as much as possible, so that for those scattered goods, you don't need to spend too much energy.

After all, this also comes with administrative costs.

Among these bulk goods monopoly, the four items of salt, iron, tea and horses are the easiest to achieve.

After all, this was originally in the imperial court bureaucracy, and it can even be said that the degree of control is much stronger than the so-called monopoly.

After Wang Shu investigated in Suzhou, among all the bulk goods, the breakthrough he chose was cotton cloth and silk.

Because this is also the largest cargo in Jiangnan.

The so-called, Jiangnan clothes are all over the world, and they are not fake.

And when these two things are taxed, the easiest thing to tax is cotton.

Without him, there are actually many types of silk.

What silk, yarn, silk, silk, Luo, brocade, satin, silk, etc.

And there are a lot of silk are high-grade goods, just like Shu brocade, many times, an inch of Shu brocade and an inch of gold, which shows the preciousness of Shu brocade, but the silk produced in Jiangsu, there are many is not less than Shu brocade.

But such treasures are not easy to tax.

Because the volume of goods is not large, it is easy to evade taxes.

Only low- and medium-grade silk and cotton cloth are the best objects to be taxed.

After Wang Shu summarized the tax collection data of the customs and banknotes in various places and the various materials of other Shaofu, Jinyiwei and Dongchang in various places, the minimum number of cotton cloths that Wang Shu could check was around 100 million.

This is still the incomplete statistics of the Ming government on all kinds of cotton cloth, if calculated from the source, this number will more than double.

And the price of cotton cloth per horse, because of the different quality, hovers between three and five dollars.

Only such a large market can make the cotton industry have a rich man like the Xu family rise rapidly.

Even if Wang Shu made a rough estimate, even if it was a tael of silver for every hundred pieces of cotton cloth.

That's a million taels.

If the tax is really collected without omission, this alone can increase the tax of at least three million taels for the Ming Dynasty.

What a terrible number.

It is true that in today's industrial situation, cotton cloth is one of the largest industries in Daming, which is related to Shandong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang.

However, it is not said that other industries are not as good as the cotton industry.

From this point of view, it is estimated that if more than a dozen kinds of bulk goods can be monopolized, Daming can at least increase the income of more than 10 million taels of silver.

Moreover, cotton production is more concentrated than silk.

Although Jiangsu produces cotton, the largest cotton production area in Daming is still in Shandong. Shandong cotton is transported south in large quantities, and this means of production is more controlled by many factory owners, while silk is produced by small farmers, and the local silkworm cocoons, from silkworm raising to silk, one dragon and one woman are gone.

It is not possible to let the officials go into every household to collect a little bit of tax, because the gains outweigh the losses.

And all kinds of textile factories can't run monks, and they can't run temples. One catches one accurately. A large amount of tax is collected, which also greatly reduces administrative costs.

In this way, coupled with the previous salt tax and sea tariff, etc., the commercial tax of the Ming Dynasty can far exceed the agricultural tax.

After Wang Shu cleared his thoughts, he summoned Chen Yue and said this idea. Said: "Shoufu asked for a monopoly on bulk goods, but this matter can not be taken lightly, I have been in Jiangnan for so many days, and decided to take the cotton monopoly as a pilot." Advance can be attacked and retreated, and it can also be defended, just at the beginning, and it will not collect too many taxes, so let's use the system of Taizu to pay thirty taxes and one. ”

"Lord Chen, what do you think?"

Chen Yue was naturally reluctant to sing against Wang Shu, but there were some things that he had to make clear to Wang Shu in advance. He pondered for a moment and said: "My lord, in fact, looms in various places are not free of taxes, and the local authorities have been taxed according to looms. ”

"You have to raise taxes on cotton, and this matter has to be considered."

Wang Shu frowned.

This is the power of the local magistrate to change in many matters.

Even though Wang Shu had been in office for a long time and had only moved from the governor of Huguang before, although Huguang and Jiangsu were both provinces, the internal situation was different.

Some lakes have taxes that Jiangsu does not have.

There are some taxes that Jiangsu does not have, but Huguang does not have.

Now I also know why Chen Yue was able to propose to open up the cotton fields in Jiangbei, and even did not need to be funded by the imperial court.

Jiangsu is really rich.

Wang Shu pondered for a moment and said: "It doesn't matter, as long as they accept the money and pass through the banknotes in various places from now on, they don't have to pay taxes, which is also a great benefit." ”

When Chen Yue heard this, he could only say: "What the adults said is extremely true. ”