Chapter 166      Conference overnight (2)

The Sixth Hall of the Ministry of Revenue, headed by Su Shun and Yan Jingming, entered the duty room and first gave a gift to several adults. Yi ordered people to bring a seat and let a few people sit down. Then he said, "The emperor is extremely concerned about the implementation of commercial tax. He ordered us to come up tomorrow. This time, we invite several adults to come here, and we want to express our opinions. We must make the business class method properly, report it to the emperor, and we must also satisfy the common people - this time, everyone is afraid that it will be more hard."

Everyone looked at Sushun at the same time. The memorial was written by him. Whether he agreed with the claims he made in the memorial, he did not need to look at the words in detail. This practice is considered a righteous ritual. A gentleman should do it, which makes those who usually think that he is ignorant and just treat him as a jester, and he feels like he is admiring.

When Huang Xi and Long Rulin were drafting the bottom, they also explained the secret to Sushun. Sushun knew that such a decree would not be issued so easily, so he was prepared. He said: "We are slaves, and we should share the worries of the king and father, and it is just right. What should we be afraid of if we work hard? What are the prince’s instructions? Just explain it."

Yi Yixiao nodded, "Yu Ting's words are right. The new business courses are related to the number of uses in our Celestial Palace, and it is even more important for the emperor to be concerned about. This time, I invited several adults to come here just to discuss how to handle the regulations and implement them in detail. Who will talk about it first?"

Yan Jingming blinked his eyes together, and his face became even more strange. After waiting for a while, he saw that no one spoke, and said first, "Let me say a few words first. The shallow view is just to attract jade."

"Okay, Brother Danchu will come first."

"I think it is not advisable to pilot the new law in Beijing. There are two reasons for this. First, the implementation of the new law was originally intended to increase the number of treasury governments. What Master Su said in the memorial was that "gathering few into many, gathering armpits into fur" was based on the method of not working hard for people's livelihood and not harming prices. Although all industries in Beijing were gathered, they were all small-scale businesses. If business courses were collected from these people, they would inevitably force these people to increase prices. In the end, the unlucky people would definitely be the common people. This is harmful to what Master Su said in the memorial, "It has nothing to do with people's livelihood."

"Well," Yi thought, and nodded slowly, "What Brother Danchu has seen is another reason?"

Yan Jingming hesitated for a moment and said, "For this second reason, most merchants in Beijing have more or less connections with the people in the royal family. Once taxes are imposed, it will inevitably cause dissatisfaction among these people. When the time comes, will it also cause trouble for the emperor to plague him?"

Such words are very subtle. In fact, everyone who is sitting knows that not only the royal family in the court, but also Yi, although he looks down on the merchants and servants in his heart, do not the housekeepers and servants in the mansion have to get a lot of money from the merchants in the capital every month?

Wen Qing has been an official for decades, and no one has a deep experience as much as him. He is very confusing and is even more unpretentious in his words and does things. After listening to Yan Jingming's words, everyone's faces were not so calm. Knowing that such a topic is very important, he hurriedly said, "Danchu's big talk in politics is the color of a scholar. Since it is not suitable to be promoted in Beijing, then let's see where it is more suitable, right?"

"This matter," Wen Xiang leaned back with a little out of the matter, "I have no prejudice, please discuss it with everyone."

So Sun Ruizhen said in a presidency of the meeting, "Since Beijing is not good, let's change the Yangzhou land mentioned in the commentary of Lord Su? It is located in a prosperous place, with most salt, rice and grain merchants, and it is the richest area. Moreover, Yangzhou is located in the south of the Yangtze River, with merchants and pure folk customs. I think it is necessary to apply it actively for the emperor's new policy. It is much easier to operate than in other provinces."

Weng Xincun did not take Sun Ruizhen's words, but he had received favors from the other party, so he was not willing to force himself. "Ying Gong, things are afraid that things will not be so simple! It is not so easy to take money out of the pockets of those merchants? If you don't believe it, look. When we have a controversy and promulgation, these people must have tried their best to ask someone to ask for advice, just to get away with it."

"Don't be afraid of this," Sushun said. "Businessmen and people are cunning. As long as the people below are willing to do their jobs with care, they are not afraid of him being slippery as an eel. The imperial edicts are placed there, are they afraid that they dare to resist the order? There is no need to worry about this matter."

Sun Ruizhen secretly gave Weng a glance and said loudly: "I agree with Yuting's words." He said, "Every time the court has made a profit, there are always disadvantages. At that time, Emperor Shizong of Hubei wrote a letter to Emperor Xilin to implement the method of "changing land and returning to the current" in Yunnan and other provinces. Isn't this good policy of saving the common people from the suffering of the overwhelming pain also giving the local chieftains a good opportunity?" Then he said: "As long as there are officials who are selected and the operational officers can understand the traitors, they can naturally prevent the problems from happening."

Su Shun didn't read much, and he loved to listen to these allusions of the previous dynasty the most. He immediately asked, "What kind of opportunity is it to take advantage of?"

Sun Ruizhen smiled, "Will we explain this matter to Brother Yuting another day. Let's talk about the business course first today?"

After a few words, the two agreed to a trial place for the collection of commercial tax. Seeing that it was getting late, Yi stood up and said, "Let's have lunch first. After lunch, we will discuss the regulations and implementation measures."

The Military Affairs Office is the first central government. Unlike the cabinet and the six ministries, no one can enter and exit the city except the Military Affairs Ministers, Zhang Jing and Sula, and they also include the listeners of the servants who can be seen everywhere in the cabinet and other places. In this way, how to cook two meals every morning becomes a problem.

Generally speaking, breakfast was taken by everyone's listeners and sent to the Longzong gate. He could not walk inside and handed it to Sula, the Military Affairs Office, for concentrated heat. Lunch was the same at the beginning. During the Jiaqing period, one summer, a military minister had been stomached for several days because of unclean water. Emperor Jiaqing was kind and kind. After hearing this, he issued a special order, and the Military Affairs Minister and Zhang Jing had a meal, and instead served it in the imperial kitchen. This became a routine.

The imperial kitchen is the first advantageous place in the Ministry of Internal Affairs! Just a pig is used every day, and there are countless other fresh fish, water and vegetables. In fact, since the Qianlong period, the emperor's food and drinks were no longer served by the imperial kitchen. The main reason is that it is not delicious.

Most of the food items of the emperor were made into semi-finished products first, placed in a yellow sand bowl, placed on an iron plate, ignite the charcoal underneath, cover the bowl with a layer of iron plate, and still ignite the charcoal. This way, the two layers of heat to keep the temperature. When the emperor gave the meal, take out the yellow sand bowl, pour it into the imperial porcelain, and put it on the lid, and then you can serve.

In this way, it almost turned into a congee-like meal until the end, so naturally it was not much delicious. Therefore, the kitchen system was prevalent since Kangxi, and in the Qianlong Dynasty, it became common. As for the dishes in the imperial kitchen, they were just placed far away and showed their appearance to the emperor.

During the Daoguang period, the imperial kitchen had long been full of warts, but because it was a stake in the first place and followed the ancestral teaching of "no reduction in cases of rules, no improvement in cases of rules", it has been preserved to this day.

When I was free from official business, I should not drink alcohol. Everyone sat around, talking and eating while eating, which was lively. Sushun remembered a strange thing, put down his chopsticks and asked Wen Qing, "Kong Xiu, last winter, when I was walking, someone got up early to serve. I saw the word "gourd" written on the lantern in his hand. I never knew what it meant. Is there any explanation?"

Wen Qing smiled, "Some people who carry such lanterns are military machines and Zhangjing."

"oh?"

After listening to Wen Qing's explanation, Su Shun realized it. It turned out that when the Beijing officials went to court, those with first and second ranks of senior officials were especially rewarded with horses to ride horses in the Forbidden City, commonly known as horses. They could sit in a chair or a special age and had to sit in a warm sedan chair. Those who entered the interior from Donghua Gate would get off the sedan chair in the arcade hall west of the Imperial Tea Kitchen; those who entered the interior from Xihua Gate would get off the sedan chair in front of the Interior Mansion. The others would get off the car outside Donghua Gate and Xihua Gate.

The ban in the capital was very strict. From the Shangshu, the Minister of the State Council to the Doctor often took mule carts, called back-stop carts, which were nothing more than a magnificent and stable cart. When it comes to the identity of the person in the cart, they had to look at the headlights. The officials of the department and the court wrote their yamen on the headlights, cut red and black paper into words, and pasted them on the carts. In addition, there were signs of red paper clippings. The above is "Fang Shengrujiu", the upper study room, the Hanlin of the study room is "book cover", and the military chapter of the Beijing machine is "gourd" - meaning to keep silent.

The military machine is in charge of the Military Machinery Office. The mistake is that it is not that it is to go out with the sages, and there are very few opportunities to travel on business trips. Of course, there are fewer opportunities to get management points from other provinces, so basically, the military machinery is relatively poor. Of course, there are also special cases, such as the governor being involved in the seawall and rivers, and the land needs to be selected for investigation, and according to the investigation of major criminal cases, etc. Generally speaking, the opportunity to make a fortune in the military machinery machinery is here (see the following text for details on this part).

Wen Qing told the story of Chaozhang. Su Shun listened with relish and seemed to have even used lunch more comfortably. Buhe Yi smiled and said, "Kong Xiu, stop talking. If you continue, you will have to eat all the dishes on the table."

Wen Xiang also joked, "Su Liu, you are just thinking like this, right? Let's talk, you eat more yourself?" Everyone laughed.

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After lunch and resting for a while, everyone started to negotiate again, but compared to the gentle and elegant morning, the discussion in the afternoon became much more tense. The biggest problem was that when the business course was collected, it was collected by the province, and then the department was removed, or the Beijing Central Committee sent someone to take charge of the local area and collect it on its behalf.

These two methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the Ministry of Revenue naturally hopes to collect and collect on its behalf. There are two advantages to this approach. The first is that it will not cause people to invade fish in the middle of the collection; the other is to reduce the level.

The so-called flattening means reducing the quality of silver. The silver number on the surface does not decrease, but has secretly reduced expenditures. It is estimated that the amount of silver saved by the flattening provinces is about 740,000 taels each year, and it is stipulated that the Ministry of Revenue should be resolved. However, after a long time, the benefits have not been seen and the disadvantages are everywhere, because the standards for flattening are different, which makes it easy to get confused.

Yan Jingming took over Zeng Guofan's vacancy and served in the Ministry of Revenue. The first thing he did after taking office was to uniformly reduce the balance. In December last year, the Ministry of Revenue was ordered to plan military pay. Yan Jingming personally presided over the meeting and thought hard and planned to increase revenue and reduce expenditure. The first strategy for reducing expenditure is to reduce the balance of each province, which must be uniform.

"Now, each province pays military pay, mostly according to the reduction. For every two taels of silver, some deduct three points and six cents, some deduct four points and nine cents, and some deduct four points. Last year, you agreed that all four points will be deducted. The one-pointed one is a deducted one. Danchu, do you know whether the provinces are following their strength?" Wen Qing was the minister of the Ministry of Management, and continued, "I honestly advise you, without mentioning other provinces, even if you don't mention the provinces, you can't even be able to achieve the same."

Yan Jingming smiled bitterly and nodded, "I know a little about this matter, so I hope that the Ministry of Revenue can send someone down to take charge of the matter personally. While collecting commercial taxes, training the staff of the province. When it is on track, the personnel sent by the Beijing center will be retrieved one by one and transferred to the province to handle it themselves. What do you think?"

After a moment of quiet in the room, Yi saw that no one had any objections, and nodded: "What should be below?"

What we need to discuss next is the types of commercial tax collection and specific collection methods. Sushun thought in the memorandum that it was necessary to handle it in one piece, and there was no need to distinguish between merchants and merchants. He set the collection amount and then implemented it according to the chapter, but he rejected it. "There is no previous example of commercial tax collection. If you do not conduct an on-site investigation and set a specific amount, if you do not complete it in the future, the new policy will be completely useless. If you set a small amount, you will inevitably be full of the clerks. I think it is better to ask the local tax and Ding tax to entrust the collection. This will not only be done successfully, but also make it easier for the people below to implement it."

Su Shun didn't agree with it. He didn't understand the various details of this kind of tax, but Huang Xi understood it. When drafting the memorandum, Huang Xi told him that in the Qing Dynasty, the tax collection method had many disadvantages. The first is that there was no system of planning and supervision, and no one paid attention from top to bottom.

In addition to customs duties - this section is under the control of the British plan. The Chinese people's own customs taxes are actually unheard of strange things in the world. Other types of taxes are all methods of collecting officials, such as land taxes, grains, customs (this kind of customs refers to permanent checkpoints), salt and tea courses, and the local tax and profits and the success of officials are naturally determined by the collection.

Although the ability to collect sufficient taxes is of course excellent, some people cannot collect sufficient taxes to cope with the success of their superiors. Therefore, taxation and malpractice are emerging one after another and cannot be enumerated.

This time, according to the decision of Sushun and Huang Xi, the new commercial tax should be broken, and the regular tax amount should be leveraged according to the merchant's income. As for whether it can be completed, it is not a problem. The communication between tax officials and merchants cannot be hidden from the world. As long as they are carefully urged, the superiors and subordinates are still worried that the people below will not be willing to take care of them?

However, he and Yi's grade were far from each other and dared not say anything objection. He sat there and refused to speak another word.
Chapter completed!