Lu Bu: My wife comes from two thousand years later

On the third day after their wedding, the couple plunged into their busy work.

It's not that I don't want to have a honeymoon for a while, but the autumn harvest is about to begin this year, and after the autumn harvest it's time to collect taxes again. If the hidden taxes and fees are not uncovered as soon as possible, the treasury's income will be reduced by at least 70%.

The cost of Lu Bu's current military maintenance still basically depends on the money he robbed from Mei County, and it also costs a lot of money and food to settle the families of the soldiers from Liangzhou.

Moreover, according to Lu Bu, he saw in his dream that there would be a severe drought and locust plague the year after next. If he did not quickly store more food and grass in the treasury, he would have to eat dirt the year after next.

It is just right that we can take advantage of this opportunity to survey the land and check the population, build water conservancy facilities in various places, and dig more reservoirs and ponds. As long as we are well prepared, the disaster year next year will be both a disaster and an opportunity for Bingzhou.

Zhang Mo has already assigned the people to measure the land. The young men and women in the Tulou and Juyi Village have been studying for so many years, and they are more than qualified to do these grassroots work.

Bingzhou now has fifteen counties in Taiyuan, fourteen counties in Yanmen, ten counties in Shangdang, and four counties in Jiaxihe County. Excluding some counties occupied by Heishan, a total of thirty-eight counties are completely under the jurisdiction of Lu Bu. If these people really want to measure such a large amount of land, it is estimated that it will take more than a year or two to finish.

The job Zhang Mo gave them was not to actually measure each piece of land with a ruler, but to first go to the county government offices to get the land registration books, and then go outside the city to check each family's land one by one according to the books. The land recorded in the books were those that had participated in taxation in previous years, and they were marked out one by one first. The remaining unmarked lands were hidden lands, which had to be either registered for taxation or directly confiscated as unowned land.

Of course, some of the registered acres may not match the actual ones. During the proofreading process, if they can be visually inspected, there is no need to re-measure them if they look similar. Some large pieces of land that cannot be visually inspected need to be measured and then registered.

In order to prevent some families from non-cooperation, Lu Bu assigned soldiers to follow the staff who were measuring the land. Families that did not cooperate were directly arrested for obstructing government work. Those who should be fined were fined, and those who should be imprisoned were imprisoned. This time the official attitude must be tough.

Once the land surveying work has been arranged, the subsequent taxation system must also be changed.

The current taxes in the Han Dynasty can be roughly divided into two parts: the first is land rent. Depending on the wealth of the court, there are 10% tax, 15% tax and the lightest 30% tax. Now Lu Bu is still implementing the original 10% tax in Bingzhou.

If we only look at the land rent, even if a one-tenth tax is implemented, the burden on the people will be very light.

The second is the tax, which is the population tax. There are many names for this tax. One of them is the Suan tax. People aged 15-56 have to pay the tax, and 120 coins per person is called "one Suan". Normally, each person pays one Suan per year. However, for merchants, slaves or unmarried women over the age of fifteen, the Suan tax has to be doubled or even several times higher.

The second is the oral tax, which is 7 coins per person for those aged 14-20. When the emperor is short of money, the age will be lowered. Currently, the government-mandated age for the oral tax is from one to fourteen years old.

20 coins may seem like a small amount, but coins were expensive in the Han Dynasty and the burden on the people was really heavy. Because of this tax system, many poor families could not even afford to have children. In order to evade taxes, they either concealed their population or drowned girls.

The third is the Gengfu, which is the money for military service and corvee labor every year. If you don’t want to serve, you can use money instead.

In addition, there is a household tax of 200 coins per household, which is used by the feudal lords and marquises of the fiefdom and is not directly included in the national fiscal revenue.

In addition to land rent and taxes, there are also numerous miscellaneous taxes on industry and commerce and mountain products. There are also unscrupulous officials who impose taxes privately, including surcharges for land rent losses. The specific amount of the surcharge is decided by the local officials themselves.

Under the heavy taxation system, even in peaceful times, the people could only barely avoid starvation. Once they encountered natural disasters or man-made disasters, they would lose everything and have to sell their land and children. After every natural disaster, it was a great opportunity for the nobles to absorb the land and population.

In addition to these passively absorbed people, there are also many people and small landlords who really can't survive and will actively rely on the aristocratic families to avoid heavy taxes and labor service. As long as they hand over a part of the harvest to the big family they rely on, the rest will be theirs. Of course, the amount handed over is less than that handed over to the country, but this can only keep them alive.

In some extreme cases, you can't even become a disciple if you want to, and you can only gamble everything to become a refugee or a bandit.

The aristocratic and powerful families concealed their land and population, evaded taxation and head-to-head taxation, and repeated land annexation and population absorption resulted in less and less government fiscal revenue. It was not until the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty that the situation became one where the local areas were rich while the central government was extremely poor. Only then did Emperor Ling of Han think of selling official positions and deducting money from the aristocratic families.

Bingzhou suffered from various rebellions caused by the Xiongnu, Heishan, and Baibo, resulting in severe population loss and a large amount of wasteland. The remaining nobles and powerful families formed an interest group. In addition to almost controlling Bingzhou economically, these interest groups also possessed a certain amount of armed military strength. Some of them may even have been connected with the Heishan army, which is why they were able to survive tenaciously after Lu Bu led his troops to Luoyang.

Of course, this was helped by the Juyi Village, but it was also undeniable that they had their own armed forces. For example, the Wang family, in addition to the troops of Amo Tulou, Wang Gai and Wang Ling also trained a group of troops.

However, this amount of force was powerless against Lu Bu's regular army.

Therefore, in order to increase tax revenue, the government currently needs to absorb refugees to reclaim abandoned land and make these aristocratic families pay taxes regularly. To solve this tax problem, it is necessary to count the land and population.

Land is easy to measure, but hidden population is difficult to check in a short period of time, and it is unrealistic to get rid of the aristocratic families and powerful people with one stroke. There are not many aristocratic families and powerful people in Bingzhou, but there is also Henei County with many powerful people. If things go wrong here, it will be more difficult for Lu Bu to take over there. This reform can be regarded as a test in advance.

What Zhang Mo wanted to learn from was the system of equalizing the land tax, abolishing the calculated tax and the head tax, and evenly distributing the tax to the land rent according to the population in a certain year, collecting taxes in one lump sum, and only collecting taxes based on the amount of land. Those with more land paid more, those with less land paid less, and those without land paid nothing.

In the office of the provincial governor's office, Du Ji raised several questions after listening to Zhang Mo's talk about the new tax system.

"Some families have ancestors who were granted meritorious land. These lands are exempt from taxes, so many people have registered their land as meritorious land to avoid paying taxes. How can we solve this problem?"

Zhang Mo said, "Since we're going to reform this, let's do it this time. We won't reclaim the meritorious land, but we will set a ceiling. Land within this range will be tax-free, and any land above it must pay. Even when the emperor bestows titles on civil and military officials, we need to set different tax-free ceilings for different ranks. Otherwise, these emerging classes will become part of the land annexation and tax evasion."

She looked at Lu Bu and said, "What do you think, my lord?"

Lu Bu nodded and said, "Madam, please decide what you think is the most appropriate course of action. I am not very knowledgeable about these matters."

Lu Bu said this out of modesty and to delegate power to Zhang Mo. Before she came back, he had learned a lot by force. He was not good at thinking of good policies, but he could still tell the good from the bad by listening to what they said.

Even if he couldn't hear it, in his opinion, whatever Amo said must be good, so he just supported it!