Taxation is one of the main sources of state finances, and the amount of tax revenue directly determines how much money a bag of country has. To some extent, taxes had a direct impact on the functioning of the empire. Taxation is always an indescribable problem. Lamenting the pain of the Empire, the tax problem affected the country's finances, and the Empire collapsed. Taxation is not only a matter for the state, but also the responsibility of all citizens.
It is said that when the civilized nation arose in early Summer, the tax system sprouted and the dynasty continued. Improve it. Land has taxes, populations have taxes, and business activities have business taxes, covering most of the activities of human society. Therefore, in the face of a powerful state apparatus, the collection of national taxes is difficult to avoid, but there are two such countries in Ancient and Modern China and abroad, one cannot be taxed, and one can be taxed. When it comes to taxes, the Ming Empire doesn't collect taxes, and the U.S. Empire doesn't collect taxes. Chinese, foreigners, ancients, modern people. I wonder why. Is it hard to collect taxes?
01 In the last years of the Chongzhen Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty, which could not be taxed, the northern border was seriously damaged, the peasants were constantly in civil war, and the state finances were seriously strained.
This is called giving, and there is precedent for that. For example, in the era of Emperor Wen of Han, the essence of worshipping Jews was to use the people's credit to borrow money from the people. That power is really powerful. The Chongzhen Emperor gave up his dignity to borrow money from his courtiers, and this money was not given to him by the Chongzhen Emperor, but to deal with the border crisis. So, did Chongzhen borrow money? The money was borrowed, but it was one hundred and eighteen thousand miles different from chongzhen's expectations. The Chongzhen Emperor set the donation level, 30,000 silver two. Surprisingly, no one in the Manchu dynasty's civil and martial circles could do this. The Duke Zhou Kui's family was rich, and Chongzhen had high hopes and intentions for his father-in-law. He secretly set a small goal of 100,000 silver taels, and continued to add an official title to the hint, hoping that Zhou Kui could play this protagonist, but so what? In the end, the king could only retrieve 10,000 silver taels. The Chongzhen Emperor was disappointed and sent someone to urge. Emperor Huan actually took his daughter to the palace and cried. 2,000 carriages were donated, and the remaining 3,000 carriages were forced to donate. The King of Lu donated 13,000 carriages. This wave of operations, I have to say, is a master! After all, Chongzhen borrowed less than 200,000 carriages from the court, but did Chongzhen's court really have no money? After Li Zicheng destroyed the city, he plundered a total of 70 million carriages. Only 13,000 pieces of silver were donated, and the leader of the state, Zhou Kui, voluntarily handed over the family's property. In total there were dozens of carriages, 530,000 silver two. The real lack of money were the emperor and the treasury. Feng Menglong of the Ming Dynasty recorded in the "Chronicle of Huacheng" that when the Chongzhen Emperor surrendered to the country, the Ministry of Finance only had 2300 silver taels left. Chongzhen was poor and sold gold and silver, but the tools and copper pots in the main hall were also sold to maintain the cost of living. So why didn't the Chongzhen Emperor have any money in his treasury? Or, pushing the timeline forward, the problem of lack of money seems to have plagued monarchs in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, from Jiajing to Chongzhen. The Wanli Emperor went directly to collect taxes and sent mining governors, eunuchs and other tax collection teams to all parts of the country, but this move soon caused turmoil and disputes throughout the country. Tax opposition has skyrocketed everywhere. Of course, there were also many eunuchs among them. Although the Ming Dynasty took the opportunity to commit evil, there was also a precedent for sending eunuchs to various places. Why did the Wanli Empire erupt into a powerful force? Taxation? What matters is the word "tax". It's all for nothing. The idea of levying taxes to enhance the domestic capital of the Wanli Emperor had unimaginable consequences, and he fought with the powerful and the people for profits. The penniless Emperor of the Apocalypse, because of his powerlessness, could only hide behind the scenes, while the government was in the hands of Wei Zhongxian, with the help of his peers, and fought with an increasingly powerful group of civilian officials. Thus, the party since Jiajing broke out. The courtiers were constantly fighting and were no longer interested in the government. Chongzhen is diligent and thrifty, honest and upright. After taking the throne, he was vigilant sooner or later, planning to rectify the mountains and rivers. Did the Ming Dynasty really have no money? Obviously not. By the 16th and 17th centuries, the Great Seafaring Wave had arrived. The Ming Dynasty held the standards of world wealth. Items such as porcelain, tea and silk were sold all over the world. It can be said that the imperial central government, which exacerbated the financial crisis of the Ming Dynasty and the central government, did not make much profit in this world trade, or could not be taxed because of old problems! At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, two tax laws were introduced. Due to the turmoil at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the new imperial court revised its household registration and cadastral. The implementation of the two tax laws is orderly, and the orderly taxation is guaranteed. However, no matter how good the system is, it will not stand the challenge of time. For a long time, the Ming Dynasty was no longer the Ming Dynasty under the reign of The Hongwu Emperor and the Hongwu Emperor. In the Ming Dynasty, scholars received many rewards, especially the privilege of labor tax and tax exemption, so the public was the first to rush to donate. It's also increasing. Privileged classes such as gentry and clans are interconnected. The biggest obstacle to the central government of the Ming Dynasty in collecting taxes was to cooperate with each other and enjoy the well-known legal right not to pay taxes. 8.5 million hectares. After 100 years, that number has dropped to 4.2 million. Half a hectare can be seen in its rampant. This is still only true in terms of land, but even more so in terms of sales tax. During the Ming Dynasty, there were many family aristocrats behind the business they wanted to collect, and the business tax was definitely cutting people with knives, so the rhetoric of competing with people for profit became more and more attractive... This was vividly reflected in the repeated prohibition and opening up of the Ming Dynasty's maritime administration. The record of shi boshi in the Ming Dynasty of the Yongru Li has not yet been written, but no one dares to open this hole. I have no reason. Jiang Zehe: The power of the gentlemen on the south bank is too strong, and these gentlemen have earned a lot of money on their own. There are too many privileged classes and too few taxpayers. If the virtuous circle continues, the Ming Dynasty will naturally be unable to tax and will eventually collapse. A Han family personally filled the last Han Dynasty, completely destroying the possibility of China enjoying the benefits of the Great Navigation Age!
02 The American Empire Does Not Collect Taxes The United States has such an implicit rule.
Do not cause the IRS. You can borrow money from anyone, but you can't borrow money from the IRS. There is a joke that a couple lives on an uninhabited island. Looking around, it became an uninhabited island. When I was upset, my husband asked, "Do you pay personal income tax?" The wife replied: Yes. The husband asked if he had paid some taxes, and finally added up the two, and there was exactly one tax that was not paid. Now the IRS has found them and brought them back. This story shows, on the one hand, the amount of U.S. tax revenue, and on the other hand, the power of the U.S. Tax Office.
American Empire. If you think so, are you too ignorant of how the U.S. hierarchy can reasonably and legally avoid taxes? In fact, the U.S. Empire had an unwritten rule that only ordinary people paid taxes strictly, and the truly wealthy aristocracy were unlikely to profit. So how to reasonably and legally avoid taxes? According to some public information, the methods we can know at present are: the first method is offshore. Offshore refers to the use of private banks to remit funds to tax havens or to set up companies in tax havens. As early as the 1920s, Swiss bankers began advertising with great fanfare around the world. Later, the Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Bermuda, the Virgin Islands and other countries that were unheard of by ordinary people joined the list, forming a huge tax haven, providing security, tax exemption and tax exemption. For the rich. Regulated and confidential financial services. For example, the Cayman Islands received a royal decree in 1978. The Cayman Islands are permanently exempt from taxation, so the Cayman Islands do not impose direct taxes on individuals or businesses, but the annual administrative costs are negligible. Island taxes are only import duties and stamp duties. , Business Registration Tax etc This is a simple tax. For many years, personal income tax, corporate income tax, capital gains tax, real estate tax, inheritance tax and other taxes were not levied. At the same time, the Cayman Islands are known as tax evasion havens because of their freedom to enter and leave the Cayman Islands. The second method is trust. The heirs transfer ownership of the property to the trustee through a family trust. Legally, the property contained in the trust does not fall into the estate category and you are not subject to inheritance tax. Since the funds paid to the beneficiaries by the trustees of a family trust are based on the valuation of the trust property and not on investment transactions, there is no problem in paying income tax and tax issues can be avoided. The third method, charity. It can be seen that every year, many rich people are enthusiastic about public welfare and donate a lot of money. Sure, many of them are philanthropic in good faith, but there are also many wealthy Americans fishing in problematic waters. tax avoidance. The fourth method is loss. This is a high-end game. Paying taxes in the United States requires an individual tax return. If you are a rich person, you want to report the loss of the company to avoid high taxes