The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

In Liu Sheng's view, even after the wars in the late Ming Dynasty, the population dropped by tens of millions.

The livelihood and economy of the southern provinces have not been greatly damaged.

According to his understanding, there is room for improvement of at least 20 to 30 million silver dollars in Da'ei's commercial tax.

The most intuitive way to determine a country's strength is to look at its financial resources in addition to its military strength.

Liu Sheng has been actively understanding and learning financial knowledge in the two or three years since he established Dawei.

This includes understanding the actual situation of trade, taxation, productivity, etc. in the Ming Dynasty through various books, files and other materials, and calculating relevant data.

Generally speaking, people of later generations often only look at the official tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty, which ranges from several million taels to as many as one to twenty million taels, and think that the productivity of the Ming Dynasty was low and the economy was underdeveloped.

This is actually the reason for the failure to understand the full picture of the Ming Dynasty’s economy.

You can actually know it if you think about it.

Before the Ming Dynasty, the economy of the Song and Yuan Dynasties was not bad, especially the Song Dynasty.

There are two most prominent impressions of the Song Dynasty in later generations. One is that those in power were too cowardly, and the other is the extremely prosperous economy.

According to the calculations of later generations, the GDP of the Song Dynasty was likely to reach 60% of the world at that time!

After experiencing the national fusion of blood and fire in the Yuan Dynasty and the cultural exchange between the East and the West, in the Ming Dynasty, many technologies were improved compared to the Song Dynasty.

Take rice production as an example. Champa rice was introduced in the Song Dynasty and took hundreds of years to promote it.

By the Ming Dynasty, not only had the promotion of Champa rice been basically completed, but the farming and cultivation techniques of various crops had also been greatly improved.

The average grain yield per mu in the Song Dynasty was more than two hundred kilograms, and by the Ming Dynasty it was as high as three to four hundred kilograms.

Some high-yielding paddy fields in the south can even produce five to six hundred kilograms of rice per mu!

In addition, from the early to the late Ming Dynasty, the promotion and planting of cotton was also completed.

As for the cultivation of cash crops such as mulberry and hemp, the scale has also expanded significantly.

When Liu Sheng was in Nanyang, he even saw a small field growing tobacco leaves.

At the same time, the handicraft industry is also highly developed.

In a record of the previous Ming Dynasty, it was mentioned that Lu'an Prefecture in Shanxi Province counted more than 13,000 silk looms in a certain year! (Lu silk, Shu brocade and Hang satin were jointly known in the world during the Ming Dynasty.)

In addition, the former Ming Dynasty Ministry of Industry's Renovation and Cleaning Department had more than 1100 handicraft workshops in Beijing!

This is true in the north, and you can imagine the southern provinces such as Jiangnan where the handicraft industry is more developed!

Therefore, later generations speculated that during the peak productivity period of the Ming Dynasty, GDP accounted for approximately 45% of the world's GDP!

Even in the Tianqi Dynasty in the late Ming Dynasty and the early and middle Chongzhen Dynasty, GDP still accounted for about 29% of the world's GDP.

In addition, Liu Sheng also secretly compared the financial and taxation situation of the Qing Dynasty in later generations that he knew.

Taking the Qianlong period as an example, after Yongzheng's reforms, his annual tax revenue amounted to more than 50 million taels of silver alone!

By the Jiaqing and Daoguang years, the population was close to 400 million, and the Qing Dynasty's annual tax revenue was as high as 70 to 80 million taels!

As for the late Qing Dynasty, the tax revenue exceeded 100 million taels, and the peak exceeded 300 million taels. This was actually the result of modernization after the Westernization Movement and was not comparable.

Based on various relevant information submitted by various ministries and collected by Xiuyiwei, Liu Sheng preliminarily concluded: During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, the recorded trade volume alone was as high as 700 million taels of silver!

It should be noted that there are records here, which mainly refer to official trade and private open trade.

In fact, a lot of trade in the Ming Dynasty was conducted in the form of smuggling.

For example, private salt, private tea, private mines, and definitely large-scale maritime trade smuggling.

At a lower estimate, the more official data of 700 million taels may only account for one-third of the Ming Dynasty's real trade volume.

At a grander estimate, 700 million taels may not account for one-fifth of the real total trade volume, or even less.

Even if we take the 700 million taels and the lowest commercial tax rate of 30 taels in the Ming Dynasty, there are at least more than 22 million taels of commercial taxes a year.

Although the commercial tax in Da'ei now largely follows the Ming system, many changes have been made. It is estimated that the average tax rate has reached one-twentieth.

In this way, the commercial tax received was only more than 21 million silver dollars. How could Liu Sheng be satisfied?

Although there is a reason for DaEi to strip off tariffs.

But how much was the Ming Dynasty tariff?

Taking the sixth year of Wanli as an example, all the banknotes in the mainland totaled only 40 taels, and the two major cities in Guangzhou and Quanzhou only had tens of thousands of taels.

Even during the Chongzhen period, the former Ming Dynasty imposed additional levies and even added Chaoguan.

However, according to an accurate written record from the 80th year of Chongzhen, the tax revenue earned in this year was only more than taels (the tax revenue of the Municipal Shipping Department has been included).

In other words, Da'ei's separation of customs duties from commercial taxes will hardly affect the comparison with the commercial taxes receivable in the previous Ming Dynasty...

Liu Sheng is well aware of the potential of tariffs, especially the potential of customs tax revenue.

They also specifically separated it from commercial taxes, and even established a Customs Department under the Ministry of Finance to take charge of this matter.

Since then, nearly comprehensive reforms have been made in terms of tariff collection and management.

This is not.

Next, Qian Yunsheng's annual report on tariffs demonstrated the results of Da'ei's tariff reforms.

"Our country's tariffs are currently divided into two categories: overseas trade tariffs and domestic trade tariffs, referred to as customs tariffs and domestic tariffs."

"Customs currently has eight offices, namely: Qinzhou in Guangxi, Guangzhou in Guangdong, Quanzhou in Fujian, Ningbo in Zhejiang, Jiading in South Zhili, Haizhou in Huainan, Dengzhou in Shandong, and Tianjin in North Zhili."

"Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, we have encouraged sea trade. Last year, the world was generally at peace, and sea trade became more and more prosperous."

"So last year, a total of 1235 yuan in customs duties were collected!"

Hear this number.

Only a few ministers in the palace who knew about it could not help but secretly marvel.

More than 12 million yuan!

This is nearly a hundred times the customs tax revenue of the previous Ming Dynasty!

Even Liu Sheng nodded secretly, his expression softening slightly.

He can only say that he is basically satisfied with the Customs’ tax revenue this year.

As far as he knows.

Later, when Westerners opened the country to Daiqing, the customs was forced to be managed by foreigners. As a result, customs taxes increased year after year.

In just one or twenty years, its customs tax revenue increased from more than 8 million taels to more than 40 million taels!

It should be noted that at that time, due to the failure of the Second Crow War, the Qing Dynasty reduced tariffs on import and export goods on a large scale, and even did not charge tariffs on imported goods, so as to facilitate the dumping of goods by the great powers.

If customs taxes were collected normally, the annual tax revenue of the Qing Dynasty customs would definitely be higher!

After Da'ei comprehensively reformed customs duties, the collection and management efficiency of customs duties could be said to be directly on par with, or even surpassed, that of the foreign tax collector teams of later generations in the 19th century.

It’s just that now Da Mingfang has emerged from the war in the late Ming Dynasty, and its population is less than 200 million.

To encourage maritime trade, the average import and export tax rates are not too high.

Being able to collect nearly a quarter of the customs duties of later Qing dynasties in one year was pretty good.

Qian Yunsheng paused, and then reported on the internal tariff.

"This year, we have 13 large inner gates, 54 small inner gates, and hundreds of tax departments."

"Eighteen provinces collected a total of 512 yuan in tariffs throughout the year."