At the same time, the Rent and Agent Law was promulgated. This is a tribute method suitable for the system of equal land. The law contains three contents: land rent, that is, grain tax. Each ding receives two stones of millet or three stones of rice every year. Adjustment, fabric tax, in line with local production, sericulture villages collect 20 feet of silk, 32 feet of cotton, 20 feet of Nabu, 5 feet of hemp and 3 feet of hemp in non-sericulture villages every year. Acting as a corvee, each ding has to serve 20 days a year. He doesn't serve, and pays three feet of Nayong silk or three feet, seven inches and five inches for each bite. When the country has something to do, additional services can be exempted from 15 days, and rent and adjustment can be exempted for 30 days. Additional service plus active service shall not exceed 50 days. In case of disaster, the output will be reduced by more than 40% without rent, by more than 60% without adjustment, and by more than 70% without tax. Rent adjustment was the normal tax at that time, and there were also some miscellaneous taxes, such as local taxes and household registration taxes, which were also mandatory. For example, the local tax is a warehouse that receives a small amount of grain in the case of harvest.
From this point of view, the method of land equalization is actually a method to guide farmers to reclaim wasteland and develop production, which is beneficial to the court and the people. The imperial court distributed the wasteland to the people for farming, and then collected rent and mediocrity. It's simple. Moreover, ordinary people have more or less land, are protected by law, and are willing to farm. Moreover, renting seeds is relatively light, and ordinary people can generally afford it. It is precisely because in the early Tang Dynasty, the land equalization system and tenancy system were implemented in various places, so agricultural production resumed development and gradually prospered, resulting in the economic prosperity in the early Tang Dynasty.
However, from the beginning, there was a contradiction and disconnection between the land equalization system and the rent adjustment system, so there was a potential corruption crisis. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects: 1. Rent-a-Yong tune is based on "people-oriented", that is, paying taxes according to the head, which shows that it maintains the feudal state's personal control over farmers, which itself does not meet the requirements of social development and is doomed to be broken in the long run. Judging from its actual implementation, there are also contradictions. The per capita burden stipulated in it is based on the fact that every man in the world has received a hectare of holiday service. No matter whether taxpayers really have that much affordability, many people who have no or no farmland are also paying rent and mediocrity, making rent and mediocrity increasingly a heavy burden for the people. Second, the field equalization method is not uniformly realized. The imperial court always represented the interests of landlords and nobles, exploited the general public, and showed obvious class differences in the formulation of land equalization law. As mentioned earlier, the land granted by royalty, dignitaries and temple landlords is much larger than that granted by civilians, and they are all permanent fields, with great differences. In practice, they often use their power to occupy more land than the legal amount. For the general public, insufficient land grant is a common phenomenon. According to historical records, at that time, the land granted to farmers (including some middle-class and upper-class families without power) was generally less than the quorum, and Kubandong was less than Yongyetian. This unbalanced land grant has created conditions for future land merger and polarization. Third, the restrictions on land sales by the law of land equalization are relatively loose, and big bureaucratic landlords can buy a lot of land, which is conducive to the development of private ownership of large land.
The equal land system in the early Tang Dynasty promoted the increase of cultivated land area and the development of agricultural production, but it was followed by land annexation, and the landlord class plundered these fields with power and financial resources and took them for themselves. Therefore, many landlords occupied a large amount of land and formed agricultural production units, which were called villages. This large area of countryside belonging to a landlord is called Zhuangtian. According to historical records, Guo Ziyi, a famous Tang Dynasty, owned a farm in the suburb of Beijing between Huang Fengling and Hechi Pass, which extended to Fiona Fang for more than 100 miles. Lu Zhi's "Playing Shu" said: "Being poor and living nowhere, relying on strength and luxury, thinking it is private." The inevitable result of landlords occupying farmland is that farmers lose their land and go bankrupt. Farmers who have lost their land have only two ways out: first, to be tenants in the landlord's manor, to rent the landlord's land, and to endure exploitation several to dozens times higher than the official rent; One is to flee to other places and avoid taxes, because the court still charges per capita rent for landless farmers. By the time of Tianbao, Zhuangtian had prevailed all over the country. In 752, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty had to denounce the phenomenon of land annexation and enriching the people and hurting the people, but in the end he said, "Be lenient and be Hong Tong" and admitted that the annexation was legal. This imperial edict is equivalent to renouncing the law of land equalization. Since then, the farmland system has replaced the land equalization system, and the private ownership of large land has replaced the state-owned land system, becoming the main form of land ownership at that time.
The corruption of the land equalization system led to the crisis of the rent equalization tax law corresponding to the land equalization system. It is embodied in the following aspects: 1. A large number of farmers become tenants of the landlord's manor, which is the private property of the landlord and no longer bears government taxes. Second, a large number of farmers fled to other places, got rid of the shackles of local household registration, and did not pay taxes or serve the country. In this regard, the government has adopted the method of sharing labor between fugitives and non-fugitives, which has made non-fugitives unbearable and aroused more standardized escape. 3. Bureaucratic landlords who occupy a lot of land, some don't pay taxes, and some pay taxes according to the population, which is not commensurate with their affordability. In this way, feudal countries lost the main burden of tax revenue-farmers, and their financial resources became more and more thirsty. Especially after the Anshi Rebellion, the number of registered households has decreased even more, and it is already difficult to collect taxes according to the tax amount. It is inevitable to change the "people-oriented" tax system.
In 780, Tang Dezong adopted Yang Yan's suggestion and formally changed the concession policy into two tax laws. The two tax laws tax by field, that is, tax by assets, and still retain the method of tax by household and household. These two taxes are local tax and household registration tax, and summer tax and autumn tax are viewed from different angles.
The two tax laws stipulate that tax should be paid according to everyone's actual field, which is an improvement compared with rent and average. After the Anshi Rebellion, the implementation of the two tax laws did play a positive role in unifying the tax system and appropriately reducing the burden on the people. Therefore, the initial implementation of the two tax laws has achieved certain results.
However, the two tax laws are still a way for the imperial court to exploit the people. From its rules and implementation, we can see that it contains many disadvantages. First, live within our means, which means that the court will increase taxes indefinitely. The rulers are insatiable, with huge military expenditure and profligacy. They raise taxes every year on the pretext of "living within our means", and they will never "live within our means" in order to reduce the burden on personnel. Second, according to the ranking of the rich and the poor, in fact, when the government reports, it often does not make a detailed investigation of the land of the rich, nor does it spare the land of the poor and the weak. The ranking of the rich and the poor is extremely unfair. It is the rich who evade taxes, and the middle and lower peasants who are exploited. Third, it is not conducive to the people to establish a household registration in the local area based on the number of acres cultivated in the fourteen years of Dali, regardless of the subject and object, leaving loopholes for corrupt officials. Because the imperial court stipulated that land and household registration could not be increased or decreased based on the fields and households of that year. As a result, local officials forced people to split up, induced foreign customers to flee into China to increase their household registration, and distributed the household registration tax to local families. Apportionment is also used to fill the reduced accounts, which increases the burden on the people. Fourth, the time for collecting taxes in summer and autumn is too urgent, so that farmers "can't pay for it until they finish collecting it, and they can't afford to lend it with a lease." Five, the two taxes are calculated on the basis of currency, which is a way to rob farmers by taking advantage of price. Farmers convert the amount of millet and silk they should pay according to the price set by the government, but the government lowers the price and collects more in kind. For example, the two taxes started at 30,000 yuan, and then reached 10,000 yuan in June and August. On the surface, the tax amount remains unchanged, and farmers actually pay twice as much in kind.