My players are all acting

The so-called empty printing case is actually not complicated to sum up.

According to the laws of the Dasheng Dynasty, the taxes collected by the counties must be reported layer by layer, and the state government will calculate the taxes reported by the counties all the way to the Ministry of Household Affairs.

After the Ministry of Households has completed the accounting of the real fiscal and taxation of the whole country, it will be checked with the fiscal and tax figures reported by various places to ensure that the two figures are consistent.

If not, call back and recalculate.

But in the early years of the Dasheng Dynasty, a large part of it was tax in kind, that is, there were not only silver taels in it, but also grain, cloth, silk, salt and so on. There may even be bits and pieces of cinnabar a few liang.

Due to the fact that some unexpected situations may occur in the process of sending the finance and tax from various places to the capital, the actual goods in storage will be significantly less than the previous statistics of the counties in kind, and the numbers will not match. Go back and review again.

In ancient times, the transportation was not developed enough, and it was troublesome to go back and forth to many places.

So as early as in the northern barbarians, officials at all levels thought of a way to save trouble, which was to let local officials bring account books with blank official seals to Beijing, and fill them in after accounting at the Ministry of Households to ensure that the two numbers must match. .

After the establishment of the Dasheng Dynasty, many officials were actually from the previous dynasty.

After all, in ancient times, those who could study and be officials were often local aristocratic families, or at least people with a certain foundation. When the dynasty changes, it is impossible for the Dasheng Dynasty to abandon all these people, which will cause big problems.

Therefore, many of the officials, especially the local officials, are actually the same group as before.

Naturally, these people followed the old way of doing things logically, and went to Beijing with a blank account book with a seal, and handed in an account book that would never make any mistakes.

But for Sheng Taizu, this was clearly intolerable.

Why is it required to check at various levels, and if the account is not correct, it must be sent back and re-accounted?

It is because taxation is the foundation of the country, and there is too much room for corruption and fraud, so even if the steps are cumbersome and the process is cumbersome, we must dig out these details.

Entering Beijing with a blank account book like this, and then filling in as much as you want, what is the point of keeping accounts?

Simply save the bookkeeping, and your local household department will collect as much as you pay, and you won’t accept if you don’t pay. Wouldn’t it be more convenient?

Therefore, Sheng Taizu investigated to the end in a rage, and punished all the chief officials and adjutants involved in the incident.

Chu Ge had a general understanding. The case he encountered at this time was almost the same as that encountered by Sheng Taizu back then.

As for whether this is an unjust case, Chu Ge also has some opinions of his own.

First of all, is it an unjust case?

Certainly not.

A group of local financial officials and a group of central financial officials gathered thousands of miles away to discuss and fill in the tax payment amount on the empty account book that has been stamped, and then pretend that it is to save trouble and improve administrative efficiency?

As long as the emperor is not stupid, he should not believe it.

This has even broken away from the category of fraudulent accounts, which is already the worst modification of original data. Since this number is discussed by everyone, what is the significance of the data actually collected and checked by various prefectures and counties?

Anyway, don’t you just fill it in?

The dynasties and dynasties before the Dasheng Dynasty all collected taxes in kind, and it has never been heard that all dynasties used empty seals. What's more, there were more than a thousand counties in the Dasheng Dynasty, and more than half of them did not use empty seals for accounting.

Among the prefectures and counties that Kongyin uses to make accounts, many of them are prefectures and counties near the capital, and places that can be reached in a day or two by fast horses also use Kongyin.

If this is to improve administrative efficiency, it is indeed a bit too insulting to people's IQ.

The task of these officials is to calculate all the data clearly. If the calculation is not clear, Taizu Sheng just asks them to go back and re-calculate.

The task of the local officials is to calculate these data, but after a year of calculation, the calculations are not correct, and they are still confident?

What's even more outrageous is that, in order to save trouble, these people just brought a blank account book and filled it out casually.

Doing the affairs of this dynasty with the practice of the previous dynasty, is there any plausibility? It is indeed not wrong to kill a group of such people.

Secondly, are there any officials here who were unjustly killed?

This cannot be confirmed, but it is likely to be there.

But in this case, it would have been difficult to tell the difference.

Because the key to this case is that the operation method of Air Printing will bring huge loopholes to the entire financial system, it is easy to cause fraud, and it is extremely difficult to trace.

How many officials borrowed empty seals to make money? How many officials just borrowed empty seals to save trouble?

This is almost an unverifiable problem.

As far as Sheng Taizu is concerned, should he believe that these officials are purely for improving efficiency? That is impossible.

Chu Ge didn't believe it either.

Just like the current officials, if they put forward a statement that can improve efficiency but obviously has a lot of room for maneuver, ordinary people will think that they are trying to improve efficiency or seek rent for their own power?

This goes without saying.

Therefore, it must be no problem to deal with this matter strictly. If it is not dealt with, then the serious financial problems encountered in the late period of the Dasheng Dynasty may appear in the early and mid-term.

After all, when making money, everyone's appetite is getting bigger and bigger.

If you killed a group of people at the beginning, you might be able to temporarily stop this unhealthy trend and let it spread a bit slower; but if you ignore, condone, and acquiesce at the beginning, then decades later, you still don’t know about it. How much space can officials chisel out.

But Chu Ge didn't intend to copy Sheng Taizu's method completely, because there was indeed a difficult practical problem behind this matter.

It is the problem of loss in the process of physical tax transportation.

After the empty printing case, the local management will collect additional consumption entitlements and use them to make up for the lost amount. In this way, the burden on the people is actually increased. Therefore, the empty seal case blocked the opening for officials to fill in the account books at will, but it could not completely solve this problem.

That's why in the later period of the Great Sheng Dynasty, the tax in kind was changed to a unified collection of silver taels, and the silver taels may have natural wear and tear during daily use and casting, resulting in a mismatch in the number, and there is a saying that the fire consumption should be returned to the public...

In short, this matter was almost impossible to solve completely in feudal society, but a series of reforms could at least have some effect at that time, and it would continue the dynasty for decades.

"Based on the situation in the early years of the Dasheng Dynasty, it is definitely unrealistic to change the unified tax in kind to the collection of silver taels. After all, the market economy has not yet developed to that extent. If it is forced to change, it will easily cause problems.

"What's more, Taizu Sheng is old and his physical condition is not as good as before, and he can't push this kind of reform that usually takes several years to complete.

"However, as far as the loss of tax in kind is concerned, a simplified version of 'returning waste to the public' can be implemented."

Thinking of this, Chu Ge thought about how to deal with this case in his mind.

Of course, the official execution of the palm seal, the exile of the deputy seal official, and the strict prohibition of any form of empty seals from happening again, of course, remain unchanged.

Then, set a strategy of "returning consumption and envy to the public".

In other words, because of the loss of tax in kind, it is inevitable that there will be "consumption envy". However, this amount of consumption cannot be collected from the people, and there must be strict regulations. Officials at all levels cannot be allowed to collect as much as they want, and there must be a fixed ratio.

In this way, all localities still truthfully report the taxation data layer by layer and go to the household department for verification.

When loss occurs due to some special reasons during the transportation, it can be regarded as loss. When entering the household department, if the consumption is within the normal range, then it will be put into the warehouse normally, and the excess consumption cannot be kept by the officials themselves, and they must also be handed over, but these consumption can be distributed to officials at all levels as subsidies Or have other uses.

If the loss is not within the normal range, then explain why. If it is due to special circumstances, such as heavy rain, then there must be relevant certificates for inspection.

Of course, Chu Ge is also very clear that any tax reform in ancient times cannot escape a law: There have been more than one tax and fee reforms in history, but after each tax and fee reform, due to the limitations of the social and political environment at that time, the burden on farmers has declined After a period of time, it rose to a higher level than before the reform.

The reason is also very simple. The original intention of these reforms is to combine all kinds of exorbitant taxes into one, which not only reduces the difficulty of collection, but also makes it impossible for officials at all levels to carry out corruption under clever names.

However, at the end of the dynasty, as the court's control over the grassroots continued to decline, officials could still try their best to collect more taxes under pretext.

That is to say, the original several taxes were combined into one, and after a period of time, officials would collect new taxes under clever names, but in fact this new tax had already been included in the previous taxes.

It is tantamount to the imperial court extracting gray income from officials, and officials try to increase new gray income with preferential treatment, and the people pay more and more taxes instead.

Chu Ge is not a god, so of course he can't solve this problem.

But he tried his best to use the wisdom of later generations to find the best solution to the fiscal and taxation problem in Sheng Taizu's dungeon in a short period of time, which can be regarded as being able to deal with the business.

After Chu Ge thought about the general countermeasures, he automatically implemented them.

However, when Chu Ge was about to go to see the changes in Dasheng Chao Guozuo, he found that this case was not over yet.

The little eunuch came to play: "Your Majesty, the alchemist uses Mr. Fang to ask for an audience."

Chu Ge was stunned for a moment: "Used by alchemists?"

He ran the name quickly in his mind.

Soon, I remembered.

This was a celebrity at the time, who was also involved in the empty printing case.

In history, he wrote thousands of words to Sheng Taizu, arguing that "the empty seal case has no other crimes and can be forgiven".

The answer Sheng Taizu gave him was: exile.

Chu Ge realized that the situation this time was probably the same as the original copy of the scribes.

It is not enough to just give a measure, and the task is not completed until these people are refuted in person.