"Is this business really that profitable?" Qi Lisun flipped through the newspaper and saw the news content on it. It was mainly about where the gentry changed careers, opened factories, and made money again; where several farmers went to the city to work, accumulated capital, and started businesses, and now they have made a fortune; where the maritime merchants shipped back a large amount of gold and silver from overseas, etc., and so on.

Qi Bansun said: "Brother, now the court has promoted the government to pay food together as a whole, and the imperial power has been put into the countryside. Even every village has sent imperial officials. The land tax is getting higher and higher, and there are still people watching. There is no way to transfer the land tax to the tenants. How much money can you make by relying on land rent? Although the commercial tax is much higher than that of the late Emperor Chongzhen, how high is the commercial profit? The commercial tax is now ten or twenty, which is actually not high."

The commercial taxes formulated by Li Guodong for the Ming Dynasty were divided into three types of commercial taxes. The first type was tobacco and alcohol tax, salt tax and customs tax. These taxes were the highest, and the tax amount could even reach more than half of the product's value! Even a slightly lower customs tax was taxed according to imported and exported products, with the lowest being one-third, and the higher being half; the tobacco and alcohol tax and salt tax reached two-thirds! The second type of commercial tax was ordinary industrial product tax, such as industrialists producing silk, ceramics, cotton cloth, ironware, wood, etc., as well as restaurants, hotels, restaurants, etc., and their tax was one-tenth; the third type of commercial tax was cultural industry tax, such as newspapers, publishers, bookstores, etc., which was one-twentieth, which was the lowest commercial tax in the Ming Dynasty.

Those who open brothels are also included in the commercial tax, but the taxes in the entertainment industry are also one-tenth, which is not too high, and the profits in the entertainment industry are also very high. The reason why taxes are the same as those taxes in the industry are because there are some secretly attached and invisible taxes. For example, they have to pay a certain amount of silver to the Jinyiwei every month. The Jinyiwei can protect them from being extorted by those rascals. If they do not give Jinyiwei the silver, the gangsters will definitely annoy them every month.

Don’t say that you have a backstage, even if you are the chief minister of the cabinet, the Jinyiwei is not afraid of you. In fact, those rascals and the like, even the Jinyiwei in the backstage is considered Jinyiwei.

In addition to paying fees to Jinyiwei every month, entertainment industries such as brothels also have to pay part of the money in the yamen to get protection from the government office, otherwise they will not continue to open.

Commercial tax adopts a step-by-step system, which is formulated based on the profit level. This approach is very fair and reasonable.

In fact, Li Guodong is not a person who hates the rich. He only hates the gentry who takes advantage of the law to get the greatest benefit by exempting himself from taxes, and hates the selfish dogs who poach the corners of the country and fill his own pockets. Those who truly get rich through labor, whether it is physical or mental labor, should be rich.

It is a matter of being a lazy person who keeps poor and is eventually eliminated by society. However, in the Ming Dynasty, you were not able to get rich by diligence, and even living was a problem. The reason was that the gentry did not pay taxes and the tax was added to the poor.

Why don’t gentry and civil servants pay taxes? It’s not like this, but those gentry and civil servants quietly modified the ancestral system. The original ancestral system was only exempted from corvee service according to fame and fortune, and did not exempt taxes. The ancestral system of the Ming Dynasty did not say that there was no tax exemption from fame and fortune. That was all after the Tumubao Incident, civil servants took the opportunity to control the court and then quietly modified the ancestral system.

In order to promote the integrated job of officials and gentry, Li Guodong started from three aspects. The first is to go to the countryside to pay grain and expand the recruitment of government officials. The towns and towns below the county town have all set up yamen, with towns and towns. There are towns and towns and towns. There are very few officials and people in towns and yamen, only one ninth rank town or town officials, and there are several yamen runners who are specifically responsible for tax collection. The second method is to go to the countryside to go to the countryside. Each township has a small Jinyiwei flag station, and there are ten Jinyiwei. They are responsible for supervising town-level officials, supervising whether the gentry has transferred taxes to tenants, and setting up a report box outside the Jinyiwei station, so that anyone can report local gentry. The third method is to mobilize the people, hold a literacy campaign, teach the people to read, publicize the laws to them, and improve the people's awareness.

By taking three steps, the gentry can avoid transferring the court's taxes to the tenants to the greatest extent.

In the Ming Dynasty, tax collections in rural areas were all gentry collecting taxes instead of the imperial court, and there were many tricks to do. Now that the imperial power is coming to the countryside, the power of the gentry has shrunk.

After the new policy of integrating official and gentry to pay food and work together was strictly implemented, it became increasingly difficult to make a fortune by renting land through the traditional method of renting land, which forced those land gentry to transform.

Qi Bansun said: "Brother, since we can't make any money by renting land, we have two ways out, one is to sell our land and develop it in Shanghai; the other is to convert our land into a new type of farm, hire people who are good at managing and hire farmers to farm, so that the tax we pay is the same, and the output can be greatly increased."

"If it is changed to a new type of farm, it is better to directly consign all the land to a person who is good at managing and let him bear the wages and taxes of the employer. We will take the money to start an industry outside." Qi Lisun said.

What he said is a good idea. Although the income from land has decreased, they don’t have to worry about it at all. The land is directly consigned to small landlords and rich peasants who are good at managing. If those people do, they can free up time to develop other industries. After all, some traditional Chinese concepts are not easy to change. They all believe that the land passed down from ancestors cannot be sold or bought, and it will become a prodigal son. Therefore, this method of subcontracting land is the best way Qi Lisun can think of.

He just started to do it. The next morning, the Qi brothers found a rich farmer who was the best at managing land in the local area, signed a land subcontract agreement with him, and then consigned all the land to that person.

Those small landlords and rich peasants who have worked for generations are the real experts in managing land. Those big landlords are actually not good at managing land and rely entirely on not paying taxes to acquire a large amount of land. In terms of management ability, they are far inferior to those small landlords and rich peasants who have to bear heavy taxes for generations and can also allow a family of big and big to live a good life. These people can leave surplus grains to support a family of big and big and big, which shows their ability to manage land.

After arranging the land at home, the two brothers Qi Lisun and Qi Bansun brought the silver and land deeds, went to Hangzhou Donglin Jiangnan Silver House to mortgage the land deeds, borrowed a batch of silver, and then went to Shanghai to develop.

Whether it is the Donglin Jiangnan Silver, Guangdong Silver, or Daming Silver, they have a good reputation, low interest rates for loans, and can be repaid in installments of 20 and 30 years. For Qi Lisun and Qi Bansun, such repayment pressure is not great. Even if they lose money in business, they can still pay the loan with the contract money they receive every year, but their life is not so comfortable.

After the two brothers came to Shanghai, they wanted to buy land in Shanghai at first, but waited for the price increase and then sold it. However, they found that they had mortgaged the 10,000 acres of fertile land at home, and even when they arrived in Shanghai, they could not buy much land.

"It's better to go to Pudong to take a look, the land price there is cheaper." Qi Lisun said.

Now, the lower reaches of the Wusong River and Huangpu Tang have been merged and have been renamed the Huangpu River. Originally, Huangpu Tang was a tributary of the Wusong River, but now the Wusong River has become a tributary of the Huangpu River, and the Wusong River has been renamed the Suzhou River. The other side of the Huangpu River has been called Pudong. Pudong is still a large wasteland, and the land price is much cheaper than the prime location on the west bank of the Huangpu River.
Chapter completed!