Chapter 792: Tax Law

Inside the great hall.

"You mentioned paying full wages — that hit the mark. But as an official of the Provincial Administration Commission..."

Liu Shizi looked at Zhang Jinyan with keen interest. "How did you come to think of this?"

Hearing the five words "official of the Provincial Administration Commission" come out of Liu Chengzong's mouth, Zhang Jinyan wanted to laugh.

But he held it in.

Very solemnly.

The Marshal's Manor — speak of it outside, and it's a northwestern power with a fierce reputation, sweeping across three thousand li in every direction.

The Provincial Administration Commission — it sounds like a yamen that controls a province's vital administrative affairs, holding great authority.

But the Marshal's Manor's Provincial Administration Commission, in Zhang Jinyan's view, was nothing more than a signboard reading "The Manor Is Doomed."

Truly, after half a year of experience watching the gate at the Provincial Administration Commission, Zhang Jinyan felt he understood the Marshal's Manor better than even the Minister of the Rites Bureau.

Never mind that the Marshal's Manor's Provincial Administration Commission had no chief officials like the Provincial Administration Commissioner, the Assistant Administration Commissioner, or the Administration Vice Commissioner — just take his own post of Recorder.

Recorder, lower sixth rank, responsible for transmitting documents between upper and lower levels — essentially the mail clerk of the Provincial Administration Commission.

Tasked with collecting official documents from every prefecture, subprefecture, and county in Shaanxi, submitting them to the Provincial Administration Commissioner, who would then compile Shaanxi's provincial-level documents and forward them to the Office of Transmission, which would pass them up to the Grand Secretariat.

This was a complete five-tier document transmission system: county, subprefecture/prefecture, province, Office of Transmission, central government.

But the Marshal's Manor had absolutely no need for this.

Although nominally it occupied the three provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai.

Yet nine-tenths of Qinghai's land was either uninhabited, or where people did live, gales and heavy snow blocked contact for eight or nine months of the year.

And those who could be contacted, because of their nomadic habits, could not be found for months at a time.

It was essentially autonomous.

Gansu was even simpler — it had the population of one large county at most, mostly military households, so there was no administrative affairs to speak of.

Ninety-nine percent of administrative affairs were in Shaanxi.

And Shaanxi, for the Marshal's Manor, counted as the seat of government.

The Provincial Administration Commission's authority overlapped with that of the military government yamen.

This wasn't really a problem in itself — at the point in time when Liu Chengzong took Shaanxi last year, the Marshal's Manor simply should not have established a Shaanxi Provincial Administration Commission.

Yet, Liu Chengzong had established it, and stuffed Zhang Jinyan and four gatekeepers inside.

The result was that Zhang Jinyan, in the Marshal's Manor, could forget about shining — instead he was worked half to death amid mountains of official documents.

The political chaos of the Marshal's Manor — the Provincial Administration Commission yamen where Zhang Jinyan worked was the epitome of epitomes.

Not only did every prefecture, subprefecture, and county in Shaanxi send him official documents, Gansu did too, and starting last month, Qinghai's Kangning Prefecture also began treating him as their mail clerk.

In fact, Kangning Prefecture had started four months ago — it was just that a windstorm blew away the boats serving as a pontoon bridge at Huangyuan Post, delaying things on the road for two months, until the Heaven-Soaring Monkey headed north just as the windstorm passed and conveniently repaired the bridge, so the early-spring documents only finally arrived last month.

Zhang Jinyan did not actually dislike the utterly meaningless paperwork... what truly worried him was that others should never have been sending documents to the Provincial Administration Commission in the first place.

That no one was managing this matter precisely illustrated the degree of chaos in the Marshal's Manor's civil administration.

He composed himself slightly, lowered his head and cupped his hands toward Liu Chengzong, and said, "In reply to the Grand Marshal, your humble subordinate serves in the Provincial Administration Commission, overseeing the flow of Shaanxi's official correspondence. Having observed the Manor's civil administration throughout, I can say it is shocking to behold."

"The Marshal's brigades are garrisoned across various regions, raising their own military funds and provisions like states within a state, following the precedent of the frontier commands — enclosing land, hunting, herding sheep and horses, monopolizing salt, grain, and mining resources. The Grand Marshal devotes himself solely to campaigns, paying them no heed, no attention, no inquiry. If this continues, your humble subordinate deeply fears... the nation's fall is only a matter of days."

These words, Zhang Jinyan spoke with heartfelt sincerity.

In the Marshal's Manor, Zhang Jinyan was one of the few officials who feared the Manor would fall apart.

Genuinely feared it.

He himself was a presented scholar and official of the Great Ming, with boundless prospects — sooner or later he would return to serve as a capital official, and after a few years of provincial assignment, he would at least reach the upper sixth rank.

A county magistrate was only lower seventh rank — upper sixth rank in the civil service system, though not comparable to local tyrants like subprefectural magistrates or prefects, was still at the level of bureau directors in the Six Ministries and provincial branch offices.

A stomp within his scope of authority, and an entire province would feel a faint tremor.

But caught in these times, having served two terms as county magistrate in Shaanxi and then submitted to the Marshal's Manor — that counted as defecting to the enemy and betraying the state, already an ironclad traitor.

Of course, traitor or not, Zhang Jinyan did not care that much.

He had simply been placed by fate at the time of Liu Chengzong's eastern campaign, in this place called Shaanxi, with no room for choice.

Every single Shaanxi official in this great calamity, without exception, either died or surrendered — there was no other outcome.

After all, abandoning one's post and fleeing back to the Central Plains meant imprisonment and a death sentence all the same.

And seeking death was not among Zhang Jinyan's choices.

Zhang Jinyan had been one of the Classics Champions in the Henan provincial examination in the first year of the Tianqi reign.

In every province's provincial examination, the Four Books topic was mandatory, while the Five Classics were elective — one chose a classic as one's specialty and was tested only on that classic's topics.

The five top scorers in the Five Classics were that session's Classics Champions.

Zhang Jinyan's specialty classic was the Book of Changes.

Change — transformation.

The sixty-four hexagrams, the three hundred eighty-four lines, each line's image commentary was a guide for nobles on how to respond to change in different circumstances, a code of conduct for proper survival.

The core idea was already stated in the image commentary of the first hexagram: Heaven moves with vigor; the noble person ceaselessly strengthens himself.

Objective laws do not shift according to human will, yet people can still understand, utilize, and reshape those laws.

Every principle Zhang Jinyan had learned taught him to follow the current with rectitude and vigor, to tread carefully and await the right moment — there was no path that said to seek death.

But if the Marshal's Manor fell apart before long, it would make his choice look very foolish.

And the most critical problem was precisely this: this thing called the Marshal's Manor, whether viewed from afar or up close, had the look of something with an extremely short lifespan.

Yet, Liu Chengzong, hearing these words, though he appeared to be listening attentively, his leaning back and slight pursing of the lips all showed he did not take them seriously.

He even... also wanted to laugh.

The Marshal's Manor, frontier command separatism — are we even worthy?

"Each brigade holds military power and financial power, and most are unruly and untamable men — you think they will splinter into frontier commands."

Liu Shizi nodded slightly. "Very reasonable."

Zhang Jinyan caught the implication and said in surprise, "Does the Grand Marshal not worry about such a thing?"

Liu Chengzong laughed, free and easy. "Three years, five years — I can hold it steady."

Zhang Jinyan had never dreamed Liu Chengzong would give such an answer. "Then... what about after three or five years?"

"Isn't that enough? Five years ago we were still sleeping in dugouts in Qinghai, daring only to think three months ahead. Now we dare say we can hold out for three years."

Liu Chengzong waved a hand, unwilling to say more on the matter. Zhang Jinyan had, after all, surrendered to him at Xi'an Prefecture — a Henan man who had never been west of Qingyang Prefecture. His experience was insufficient.

He had never seen the gobi desert, so desolate that only birds and beasts shat there.

Nor could he truly empathize with the fear, greater than anything, that hunger held over the Marshal's Army from top to bottom.

Zhang Jinyan could not understand his expediency.

The Marshal's Army's military supplies had always been relatively ample — even compared to any other army, they did not lag behind in supply.

Only money — that was scarce.

Liu Shizi's essential job was secondary distribution. He did not produce wealth; he was merely a porter of wealth.

To put it bluntly, they used whatever they looted, distributed whatever they looted. Without a sufficient population base, they had never possessed enough precious metal to pay the troops their full wages.

In the past, when tens of thousands of troops were in He-Huang, the in-kind ration policy worked extremely well. But now the great army was spread across the whole of Shaanxi, stationed separately in each prefecture, and still relying on in-kind military supply — that was no long-term solution.

It was not that supply was impossible. Grain, though it suffered heavy losses in transit, was not a major problem for now, relying on levies in Shaanxi.

The crux was still: whoever paid the army, the army belonged to.

Since the Marshal's Army took Shaanxi last year and dispersed to garrison each prefecture, the de facto controller of each garrison brigade was no longer Liu Chengzong, but each brigade commander.

The central authority gave no military pay, leaving each brigade to feed itself off the land — that was tantamount to giving away fiscal power. Given time, chaos was inevitable.

It was just that, for Liu Chengzong last year, having just taken Xi'an, the timing for addressing military pay was truly not ripe.

In-kind rations could hold out a while longer. If they issued military pay and then a major shift in the situation made subsequent pay impossible, that would cause even bigger problems.

This year, however, with gold and silver support from the Later Jin, Liu Chengzong's spine would be a little stiffer if he were to issue military pay.

He said, "Let's hear your views on issuing pay. I recall you observed governance in the Ministry of Revenue. Naturally, paying the entire army its full silver wage is a good thing, but once issued, it cannot be cut off. So where would the silver come from?"

As he spoke, he added a reminder: "If your suggestion is to cast debased coin, forget it."

So-called debased coin was currency of insufficient value.

This had been tried far too many times in history — a monetary policy beneficial in the short term but leading to collapse in the long term.

Due to refining techniques, the Central Plains had since antiquity recognized only full-value gold. When Emperor Wu of Han curtailed the vassal kings, he curtailed those who submitted gold of insufficient fineness.

The greatest consequence of casting debased coin was lowering the barrier to minting, triggering private coining. Bad money drives out good, causing the monetary system to collapse beyond all restraint.

The Tang Dynasty had seen exactly this — executions, exiles, collective punishment — nothing could stop it.

And for Liu Chengzong, his economy was already collapsed, built on a barter foundation. If it was going to trigger economic upheaval, he might as well keep using barter.

Primitive as it was, it had the virtue of stability.

Fortunately, Zhang Jinyan's suggestion was not coining money. He cupped his hands and said, "Grand Marshal, the silver for military pay must naturally come from taxation. In this humble officer's view, for the Marshal's headquarters' economy, military pay and taxation — neither can be dispensed with."

"Earlier, the realm was short of gold and silver. Fortunately, the Grand Marshal campaigned far into Liaodong, storming cities and winning great victories, bringing back much gold and silver. Our Marshal's headquarters already possesses the foundation to issue full military pay."

Liu Chengzong suddenly saw the light. He looked at Zhang Jinyan and smiled. "So you've had your eye on the spoils of my eastern expedition."

"That's not a problem in itself. Only, I already distributed the silver in my hands to the troops as reward money. What entered the treasury now is just a few thousand gold bars... I fear your calculations will come to nothing."

"This humble officer is aware of that."

Zhang Jinyan smiled too. That Liu Chengzong had brought back gold and silver from the eastern expedition was no secret. Even before the army returned, word that every campaigning soldier had a catty of silver had already spread throughout Xi'an Prefecture.

He said, "It is already autumn, the time of the great harvest. The troops will also be spending money. Xi'an Prefecture has enormous tax revenues — it will be very easy to draw that silver back in."

"This humble officer suggests that the Revenue Office establish a Grand Granary Silver Vault and a Military Pay Department. The Military Pay Department would set up Military Pay Bureaus in each prefecture where troops are garrisoned. Each bureau would be staffed with one Commissioner dispatched by the Revenue Office, and one Deputy Commissioner each from the prefectural office and the brigade office, to jointly calculate tax revenues and garrison troop grain quotas."

"Below the prefectural level, all levies shall be collected in kind, stored separately, with no meltage fee imposed on the common people. The Military Pay Department shall coordinate troop grain and issue tally documents. Each regiment under a brigade shall, according to its station, proceed to the nearest Military Pay Bureau to collect its rations. Surplus fodder and grain shall be transported to the prefectural office granaries."

"Prefectural offices shall establish markets. A portion of grain shall enter the Ever-Normal Granary; a portion shall be sold at market at official prices to stabilize grain prices. The silver shall be transported to the Grand Granary Silver Vault at the military government office, and from there the Revenue Office shall disburse military pay to each brigade."

Liu Chengzong listened quietly for a while. When Zhang Jinyan finished, he nodded slowly.

He understood. It was an epic-level empowerment for the Marshal's headquarters' Revenue Office and the prefects.

In earlier discussions, Liu Chengzong had already intended to elevate the supervisory authority over the county-level substitute corvée silver levies to the prefects. Now he was going to let prefects retain tax revenue and disburse military pay... Liu Shizi felt that would give the prefects far too much power. It was unsuitable.

A local chief official was a local emperor whose hand covered the sky.

He administered subordinate departments and counties, propagated moral instruction, adjudicated justice, levied taxes and corvée, inspected officials, carried out the resolutions of the court and the three provincial offices, supervised schools, conducted rites and ceremonies, and oversaw household registration, postal services, horse administration, public security, granaries, water conservancy, and transport — all such matters.

A prefect's power within his jurisdiction was already near-absolute.

But Zhang Jinyan's proposal, upon Liu Chengzong's consideration, was indeed workable for solving the military pay issue.

Except for Yan'an Prefecture.

Among the prefectures and counties where the Marshal's Army brigades were stationed, only Yan'an Prefecture's tax revenue, even if collected in full, could not cover the garrison's rations.

Let alone any leftover grain from the two taxes that could be sold at market price to serve as military pay.

In the various prefectures of Shaanxi, cultivated land area mostly ranged from twenty thousand to over a hundred thousand qing. Even when stricken by disaster, they still maintained over nine thousand qing of mature farmland.

Yan'an Prefecture alone was the exception. Though its territory was vast, northern Shaanxi was mountainous, so its total cultivated land area was small — only a little over thirteen thousand qing. The fields were barren and it was the most severely disaster-stricken. Its currently registered mature farmland amounted to a mere one thousand eight hundred qing.

With this little land, feeding itself was a struggle.

But aside from Yan'an Prefecture, the other places could basically cover military expenditures, with even a slight surplus.

When the time came, combined with the Marshal's headquarters' "capital transport" — that is, allocated funds from Xi'an Prefecture — the military pay issue weighing on Liu Chengzong's mind could be properly resolved.

"If that is the case, then the supervision of the substitute corvée silver cannot be given to the prefects. It must be transported to Xi'an, submitted with a budget, and then allocated by the Ministry of Revenue. The local accounts need not retain any money."

Liu Shizi was well familiar with this.

From that other set of memories: after the Later Jin seized the realm, there was a famous policy — merging the poll tax into the land tax.

The poll silver had always been within the land tax. Their merging of the poll tax into the land tax was actually taking the locally retained land tax and moving it to the central government, leaving the localities with no money and no way to fund infrastructure.

When localities had to find ways to cover expenditures and keep the yamen running, miscellaneous taxes multiplied.

A similar example is 'Fire Consumption Returned to the Public.' Fire consumption itself was a kind of miscellaneous tax levied by local yamen offices. The rationale was that the court collected silver, but silver doesn't grow in the fields. The yamen collected taxes in kind, and when smelting it into silver for the court, there would be roughly a ten-percent fire consumption loss.

In truth, it didn't exist. The silver of the Great Ming was pure silver — there was no such high fire consumption.

But local governments had expenses, so they inevitably found ways to collect miscellaneous taxes.

Fire consumption was also returned to the public — not that the cost of fire consumption was counted as a public expense, but that the money from fire consumption was to be included in the regular tax, elevated from a local tax to the court.

The result was that the local commoners paid the fire consumption, and then had to pay yet another fire consumption to the local yamen, because fire consumption had been returned to the public — what you were paying was no longer fire consumption, but national tax.

After paying the commuted labor silver, there were still corvée duties, which led to the subsequent policy: 'Gentry and commoners alike serve in labor and pay grain taxes.'

If they'd already paid the commuted labor silver, why did they still have to serve in labor and pay grain taxes?

Because the poll tax had been merged into the land tax — what you paid was the field tax, not the poll silver.

To be exempted from corvée labor, you had to pay yet another poll silver collected by the county.

Of course, to push through such measures that increased national tax revenue while making officials bear the infamy and struggle to keep things running, Yongzheng had a method: he took a portion of the fire consumption and commuted labor silver collected locally and distributed it as salary to the local chief officials — that is, the incorruptibility-nurturing silver.

Liu Chengzong did not agree with these policies in principle, nor did he see any need to imitate them, but they held extremely high referential value.

This money he could forgo, leaving it for local operations, but he had to know how much the localities collected — that is, the power of oversight had to be held in his own hands.

"As for what you mentioned about the Logistics Office sending personnel with Ministry of Revenue banknote credentials to the prefectural office to draw grain — that's changed. Now the prefectural office, bearing the Ministry of Revenue banknote credentials, transports the grain to each army's designated station."

In one sentence, drawing army grain was changed from the prefect's authority to the prefect's obligation.

Having said this, he told Zhang Jinyan, "Go back and compile this into an official document, submit it to the Military Government Office, and when the time comes, forward it to the Revenue Office. We'll all discuss and draw up the regulations together, to serve as the Marshal's Office tax law from now on."

?? Good evening!