I Build an Aircraft Carrier in the Ming Dynasty

After a period of military expansion, Wu Changqing now has 20,000 troops.

This number is actually very small. Liu Liangzuo occupied a Changzhou and could raise an army of 60,000 or 70,000, while Wu Changqing occupied a large area of ​​Wusong. According to Liu Liangzuo's method, it was no problem to raise an army of 100,000.

However, Wu Changqing didn't do it. God knows how many people will be killed.

After expanding the army to 20,000, Wu Changqing also began to consider the issue of how to collect taxes. With the little money he got from raiding his home, he could support the army for two or three months, but after all, it was not a long-term solution, nor a stable source of money.

You can't go to a few big households to raid their homes every time they run out of money, so how can other big households dare to stay in Suzhou. If all those rich businessmen run away with their assets, then the social system of Suzhou City will also collapse.

Most of the businessmen are indeed not good things, but a society really cannot lack them.

In addition to raising the army, he also needs to pay salaries to those officials on the site. It is impossible to expect funds from the Ming Dynasty to be allocated. Now, whether it is King Lu or King Tang, all of them are poor and need to be underpants.

They have all the titles and titles they want, but none if they want money.

His current monthly military expenditures and administrative expenditures add up to about 300,000 yuan. And once the war starts, the military spending will probably cost one million taels a month.

Those wounded soldiers need treatment, the dead soldiers need pensions, and the consumption of food and ordnance, these are bottomless pits.

"Mr. Gu, how much money do we have in the warehouse now?"

Wu Changqing asked.

"It's only 700,000 taels. If there is no war, it's fine. If there is a war or some natural disaster, the money will not be enough. Moreover, if we want to continue to expand the number of Mongolian schools and open large schools, we still need to prepare one million. About two."

Gu Yanwu said.

"What about the tax, how much is Wu Song's tax here for a month?"

Wu Changqing asked.

"Because we didn't set up a card to collect lijin or raise taxes, the current tax rate is very low, less than 100,000 taels a month. General, now that we have completely controlled Wu Song, we can adopt a more aggressive tax policy. Those merchants can't make any big waves."

Before Wu Changqing's control of the locality was not stable enough, and there was a strong enemy of the Qing court, so they did not dare to increase business taxes rashly, for fear of causing resistance from businessmen and social unrest.

However, now the Qing army has no strength to attack them for the time being, and their strength has also expanded to 20,000, which is enough to deter those Xiao Xiao.

In this case, in fact, it is already possible to appropriately increase the tax intensity.

Only one hundred thousand a month?

This number made Wu Changqing speechless, it was too few.

As for Gu Yanwu's proposal to increase the business tax, Wu Changqing also agreed.

"In order to avoid resentment among those people, let's start with my shop and Chen's business."

Wu Changqing said that he played a trick here.

On the surface, it seems quite altruistic to increase taxes on the business of one's own family and one's in-laws. But in fact, the truth is that even if the Wu family and the Chen family do not collect taxes, the money they make is directly used by Wu Changqing and put into the army.

Now the tax collection is just a different way of handing it over to the army, and the result is the same.

For other businessmen, it is completely different, because they now earn all their own money. And after the tax was added, they had to pay extra money to Wu Changqing to support the army.

It may not be easy to deceive those shrewd businessmen with this kind of trick, but in the eyes of the common people, Wu Changqing is very impartial and selfless, and can get the support of the common people.

These days, officials who collect taxes first and start their own businesses have long since disappeared. Wu Changqing's move can obviously buy a lot of people's hearts.

"Of course it's better."

Gu Yanwu said that he admired Wu Changqing's willingness to invest all his family property into the army.

In this era, very few officers or civilians would do this. They are all relying on power to make money, and no one would put money into it.

The reason for this situation is actually very simple. When others become officials or lead soldiers, they are rushing to get promoted and get rich, and the life and death of the country has nothing to do with them.

And Wu Changqing is rushing to dominate the world, and in his eyes, the world is already his own. As long as he unifies the world and becomes the emperor, then the wealth of the whole world belongs to him.

Afterwards, Gu Yanwu took out the business tax plan he had initially formulated, and Wu Changqing looked at it and put forward his own amendments in some places.

Commercial tax can not be arbitrarily set, otherwise it will cause social unrest.

For example, if the tax on grain and salt is too high, the merchants can only raise the price if they can't earn it, and if the people can't afford it, they can only starve to death or die of illness.

If the merchants are not allowed to raise prices, the merchants will not do the business if they can't make money, and the people will still starve to death or die of illness.

If the tax of local merchants is too high, their products will lose competitiveness, and if the tax of non-local merchants is set too high, they will not be profitable, and the economy will decline.

From ancient times to the present, and from now on, those in power know that businessmen are not good things, but they have nothing to do with them.

After formulating a large number of detailed tax rates, Gu Yanwu estimated that the tax revenue in Wusong would reach about 500,000 taels per month in the future.

This is already quite good. You must know that when Chongzhen was in power, the whole country could only

Take four or five million taels.

"You find someone to set up a special tax inspection team. Those who dare to evade and resist taxes will be fined. Those who do not change after repeated teachings will directly raid their homes, and the head of the family will be beheaded to the public."

Wu Changqing said that if he doesn't make a move, he must be ruthless enough to make those businessmen dare not have any thoughts of resistance.

If they don't show toughness when they resist, they will probably join forces to fight the tax collectively, which will be troublesome.

The best way is to be very tough from the beginning, catch one or two typical home raiders, and kill the chickens as an example.

"Should we recruit some more officials, we are seriously understaffed now."

Gu Yanwu said, in fact, after receiving the original large number of demoted officials, there is not much shortage of administrative officials. However, Wu Changqing had not yet declared his allegiance to the Daming court, which led to some things that could have been handed over to the Daming court.

And this requires the addition of many new administrative officials, but they are not the center of the court and cannot directly appoint officials.

In short, because they are not an independent regime in name but an independent regime in fact, this will cause a series of troubles.

"Yes, anyway, it doesn't have to be approved by the court. We can give them an official position first. As for the future, we will talk about it later, let this institution operate normally."

Wu Changqing said that he almost said that he was going to rebel. After all, in Wu Changqing's current status, he really is not qualified to appoint those civil servants.

Gu Yanwu was quite helpless when he heard the words, he didn't know how things would develop in the future. In short, he can only take one step at a time now.