Zhifu, a strange mountain place.

Zheng Zhilong left, Zheng Zhibao also left, Zheng Sen was still away, and Zeng Ying was very sensible and stayed in Dengzhou. This is called staying behind. Feng Chengshi, who was in charge of the military operation plan, felt like he was turning around.

Although he knew that what he would do would be a "notorious" thing, and would be despised by the scholars of the world and even left a bad reputation for a hundred years, Feng Chengshi was willing to accept it.

The feeling of such great power and sweeping everything is so wonderful.

As a member of the Zheng Group, how much energy did he lose in order to stand out from countless clerical officials?

Now he has finally been entrusted with an important task and can show his skills. If he doesn't take the opportunity to leave a deep impression on the Duke, wouldn't his efforts have been gone in vain for many years?

Therefore, Feng Chengshi looked at the gentry and landlords in Denglai as if he was looking at a group of pigs and sheep waiting to be slaughtered.

"Denglai is a bit special. Many local gentry are afraid of our army's revenge, so they dare not get close to the Tartars. They cannot get their handle. However, under the tough measures of our army, the land renting matter is still going smoothly. After observing this period, there are still few who dare to go all the way and stand by our army to the end."

At the internal meeting, Feng Chengshi made a simple summary of the nearby things. His words were a bit red, and Zhou Lianggong, who was attending the meeting, twitched his mouth straight.

"But, renting a land is important, and collecting taxes is just as important."

Yes, today's meeting focuses on tax collection.

Not only does this year's summer and autumn taxes have to be collected, but also the tax arrears accumulated over the next year.

Specifically, it is the tax arrears accumulated by the gentry family in Denglai next year.

Before, the Zheng family planned to Ding Qingtian in Denglai, and then cut meat with a knife, so that the gentry of Denglai was cut very hard. Some gentry were tragic and organized their slaves to resist.

But all the resistance was taken down by the Zheng family.

Some people inside lost their heads, some were sent to Nanyang, but more people remained, and 50 to 100 acres of land were left at home. You can’t put things on others for nothing, right?

Zheng Zhilong would not do such a tasteless thing.

For those gentry who had no handle to capture him, he used the old method to transfer the confiscated land to Nanyang 1:1.

At this time, in the eyes of the gentry of the Central Plains, the 1:1 land of Nanyang was purely disgusting. Not to mention one to one, they would not go to Nanyang even if they were one to ten.

But this is still a "hidden danger" in Zheng Zhilong's eyes.

If it is a hidden danger, it must be eliminated. Nowadays, tax collection and tax recovery are the magic weapon Zheng Zhilong used to eliminate hidden dangers.

Zhou Lianggong was relieved and had a decent smile on his face. It was indeed to eliminate the Tianqi in Nanyang. Since that is the case, if the Zheng family wants to recover the taxes, let them pay them well.

The Ming Dynasty is about to revive, and Qi and Lu are still coming to the Ming Dynasty. These gentry suffer some losses now, but their lives will always be better in the future.

Because the court did not pass Zheng Zhilong's liquidation regulations, those scholars with fame and fortune will be the best when the Ming Dynasty is restored.

As a member of the Ming ruling class, Zhou Lianggong knew everything about the hidden behavior of gentry evasion and hidden rules.

To be fair, the reason why the Ming Dynasty ended up with financial resources collapsed and the lack of military and food supply was finally almost destroyed and lost its country. This gentry class is to blame.

Now these people are punished, even if their retribution is good.

His family is in Jinling, not Denglai.

Zhou Lianggong did not have the idea of ​​being the boss for the sake of the gentry of Denglai. Although with the hope of revival of the Ming Dynasty, Zhou Lianggong had unconsciously downplayed his relationship with Zheng Zhilong. It can be said that he changed from a Zheng group like Li Shiyuan to a friendly person like Zeng Ying, but he never had a bad intention to get the trust of the court.

Therefore, Zhou Lianggong, who is Zeng Ying's representative, is sitting in the conference hall like a wooden man, allowing Feng Chengshi to talk about those vicious methods of "harmful people", but he has not spoken a word, and he has never heard of it.

...

"Zheng Thief wants to pay the tax arrears..." The news blew like the wind and drove the land of Denglai.

Zeng Ying, who was in Denglai, heard the news from Zhou Lianggong who was returning. Zeng Ying laughed loudly, and Guo Shangyou was even more amazed and breathless.

The latter is a great nobleman who started his career in Zhou Lianggong.

The biggest reason why Zhou Lianggong was able to lead thousands of Denglai troops to the west as the magistrate of Weixian County to reinforce was that he received the support of a group of old ministers in Weixian, and Guo Shangyou ranked first in the inner world.

Zhang Erzhong, the former assistant minister of Shaanxi Pacific, has now been recruited into the court.

Guo Shangyou is a person of the same age as Cao Yu. He is now 80 years old, but he is in good health.

In the 29th year of Wanli, he was a Jinshi. He served as a county magistrate, a minister of the inspector, a prefect, a prefect, a governor of the grain transportation, and a minister of the Ministry of Revenue.

He is considered a famous official.

In history, when Wang Aoyong submitted two recommendations to the old officials of Qi and Lu, he was in the first place. However, being able to refuse to serve in the Qing Dynasty and preserve his integrity was also rare in the environment of the late Ming Dynasty.

At present, he, Zhang Erzhong and others moved their homes to Dengzhou early, and Zeng Ying respected him very much.

One of them is a governor who came step by step from a small county magistrate, and the other is a former Minister of Revenue. He really knows very clearly about tax owing taxes and hiding hidden matters.

The population registered in the Ming Dynasty reached its peak during the Chenghua period. In the following hundred years, the population of the people continued to grow, but Dingkou, which was registered in the government, was getting worse every year. The number of land acres in the government, was too different from the actual situation.

The Ming Dynasty collected taxes based on the household registration, and many gentry families had dozens of old and young people, and there were many men and women, but they were only recorded as one household in the household registration book. Land annexation caused many farmers to lose their land and become tenants, or the whole family entered the household registration family as slaves, so these people naturally did not exist in household registration.

There are also immigrants who have moved from other places who rarely take the initiative to report their household registration, and the surrounding large households often try their best to conceal the population.

In fact, the Ming court also checked the population and measured the land, and even set rules and regulations. However, the matter was done by man. The rules and regulations that the court had restricted local governments became shortcuts for local officials to get rich.

Once the white silver is stuffed, ten acres of paddy fields will become three to five acres of dry land, and ten strong laborers in the family will become a family of five. As long as you pay attention to the measure and grasp the bottom line of the men - if all the population and land are reduced without warning, it will affect the performance of the men.

But as long as these bilateral sides reach a silent tacit understanding, everything will be indifferent.

There is even an interesting story in later tax history books on the Ming Dynasty: In the Hongwu year, the Ming court could receive more than 30 million stones of tax grain a year, and at most 32 million in one year. Zhu Yuanzhang was very happy and felt that so much food was enough for his Zhu family's Ming Dynasty. So he issued a rule similar to Kang Mazi never adding taxes, which stated that taxes would be collected according to this standard in the future, and the tax grain would not exceed 33,000 yuan per year, so that the burden on the people would not be too heavy.

Zhu Yuanzhang was too cruel to scholars, and he killed them so much that they were afraid of him, blamed him, and hated him. Naturally, no one came to praise him. Let's see how Kang Mazi flattered him?

However, the facts proved that Zhu Hongwu was too naive. Because the standard he mentioned was basically not met later. In addition to Emperor Yongle, who was as strong as his father, the subsequent emperors of the Ming Dynasty were very happy to reach the standard of 27 million every year. By the Wanli period, there were only more than 25 million left, so the three major battles of Wanli spent all the treasury of the Ming court...

It was Chongzhen's turn to succeed the throne. Scholars all said that he collected too much tax and led to the peasant uprising. It was the Liao salary and other three salary that were too disabled and harmed the people. But what about it?

Emperor Chongzhen, the unlucky doll, sat on a mess, but was not capable of building other countries. In this way, he could only become a king who was destroyed.

The grassroots of the Ming Dynasty were completely ruined. The Ming Dynasty was not without money, but the money was not received by the emperor. Emperor Chongzhen hung on the famous crooked tree and cried loudly: "The king is not the king who destroyed the country, but the ministers are all the ministers who destroyed the country!"

Although it is too one-sided, it is not completely unreasonable to judge the performance of Ming officials.

Neither Guo Shangyou nor Zeng Ying had the courage to challenge the unspoken rules of this society. However, the two people who were still a little loyal to the Ming Dynasty were happy to see the gentry suffer and learn some lessons.

They dare not "offend" scholars, but Zheng Zhilong had already lost his mind. He would soon call himself an idle overseas so that he would not abandon those shameless gentry.

Judging from Zheng Zhilong's actions over the past few days, it was so "brutal". In the eyes of the Dendras, Zheng Zhilong could compete with Qin Shihuang, who burned books and buried scholars.

So, whether it was Zeng Ying or Guo Shangyou, they all laughed after hearing the news. At the same time, just like Zheng Zhilong's previous refusal to collect the fields, they once again rejected the many gentlemen who came to cry in the morning.

The tax system of the Ming Dynasty adhered to the customs of the Tang and Song dynasties and adopted a two-tax system. The tax was collected twice a year: summer grain and autumn grain. In theory, it only collected rice, wheat and grain, which is called "real color". However, in actual operation, it is also allowed to use silver, money, cloth, etc. - the so-called "broken color" to compensate.

In addition to paying grain, the people should also undertake corvee labor every year, which is to work for the government. These corvee labor was also allowed to be offset. Especially in the late Ming Dynasty, after the One Whip Law, corvee labor was mostly converted into silver. Therefore, tax collections in various places basically meant collecting money and grain.

But if you want to know the exact number of land acres in the gentry's family, know the amount of land acres in it (good or bad, paddy or dry land), and know how many of the water they paid for that year, it would be an extremely complex project.

Not to mention the whole Denglai, just a strange mountain site can make Feng Chengshi so busy that he can't get rid of himself.
Chapter completed!