A Study On The Land Tax In The Period Between The Tang And Song Dynasty

Land tax played a crucial role during the developing process of ancient China's agricultural society. Land tax, land system and household registration system complemented one another, formed the government's financial basis, and maintained the society's economic order. At the same time , land tax was the core of ancient China's tax and corvée system and influenced deeply the other social aspects. The land-tax collecting method in ancient China consisted of a developing process from capitation tax to land tax. The period between the Tang and Song dynasty was this process'transitional part. During this period, capitation tax was replaced by land tax, the surcharge of land tax was expanded and became concordant, the differences of land tax between different places were increased and the land-tax collection and management were adjusted. Therefore, the study on the land tax change during the period between Tang and Song dynasty has a high value. At the same time, since the land-tax change had various levels of influence on the government finance, agricultural economy and the peasants'lives during this period, this particular study helps greatly to understand the social development in Tang and Song dynasties. On the basis of absorbing the former research findings in academia, this dissertation analyses the change of land tax system in the period between Tang and Song dynasty in five chapters from the aspects of this system's constructional evolution, its adjustment in executive mechanism and the influence of its change.Chapter one is"the change of land tax". By examining the formation of"bi-tax law", the constitution of"bi-tax law"in the middle and late Tang dynasty and Five Dynasties, and the inner change of land tax in Song dynasty, this chapter outlines the evolution tendency and the feature of land tax change in the period between Tang and Song dynasty. The collecting practice of land tax for local public welfare barn in the former part of Tang dynasty and the financial destitution after"An-shi War"made land tax become more and more important and land tax eventually became the important part in the"bi-tax law"."Bi-tax"established the land tax and household tax as the major taxes, which conformed to the operational method of local tax system but contributed to the fact that the tax power was transferred to the local administration and that land tax annexed household tax. During the middle and late part of Tang dynasty, land tax annexed household tax latently. In the Five Dynasties, the new land tax system was established. Collecting tax according to the land measurement made the land as the tax-collecting object classified further. The land tax in Song dynasty began to transfer to inner change.Chapter two is"the evolution of the surcharge of land tax". This chapter puts emphasis on the tendency that the surcharge of land tax's variety and function were enlarged and the concordance of the surcharge of land tax in the process of land's becoming the tax-collecting object during the period between Tang and Song dynasty. This chapter first analyses the surcharge of land tax in the former part of Tang dynasty and concluded that the surcharge of land tax in this period was still within the central government's normal laws and regulations. Second, this chapter analyses the three climaxes of the surcharge of land tax, disclosing the tendency that the changes of the surcharge of land tax were synchronous with the transference of the tax-collecting object from capitation to land. Last, this chapter analyses the formation and concordance of sundry revenue in Song dynasty and finds that sundry revenue evolved to the single surcharge of land tax and played an important role as a complementary type of tax. On the base of research, this chapter believes that because the surcharge of land tax was added with the normal tax, the surcharge of land tax became more and more important as the normal land tax's position got higher and that the concordance of the surcharge of land tax showed the same feature with the inner change of land tax.Chapter three is"the geographical differences of land tax". This chapter analyses carefully the reasons that the formation of the geographical differences of land tax got formed, the dynamic performances of these geographical differences of land tax and the regulations and limitations for the geographical differences of land tax in Song dynasty. This chapter believes that the reasons for the geographical differences of land tax were that ancient China's taxes were fixed according to geographical differences and that the tax power was transferred to the local administration in the period between Tang and Song dynasty. In the period between Tang and Song dynasty, two kinds of taxes existed, tax rate varied greatly and both the central government's laws and the local regulations had geographical features in the period between Tang and Song dynasty. In the Five Dynasties, because of universal great disorder, geographical differences became larger. Song government tried to eliminate these differences; however, its efforts were limited within certain areas. The geographical differences of land tax in the period between Tang and Song dynasty were certainly connected with the social background in this period. However, looking from the fact that these differences were synchronous with land tax's higher position, the author believes that the inner feature of land tax contributed much more to these geographical differences.Chapter four is"the adjustment of land-tax collection". This chapter analyses the corresponding changes of the collecting method of land tax after the constitution of land tax system was changed. This chapter also analyses the adjustment of land and household registration systems, which were closely related to the collection of land tax. The appearance of ancient door-plate(hu-tie) and the perfection of"household money"(hu-chao) showed that the land-tax collection and management were strengthened."Tao-tian-li-zu","Ren-chong-yong-ye", and"Yi-chan-ge-shui"were the tendency of land-tax collection and management after land and tax were closely connected together. In the land management, statistic measures were strengthened and the control of land trade was also strengthened. Domiciliary registration according to land ownership, the division of native household and immigrated household and the appearance of topographical household were the results of the adjustment of the household registration system. All these formed the new features of tax collection and social management in the late part of ancient Chinese society.Chapter five is"the influences of the land-tax transformation". This chapter analyses the influences of the change of land-tax system on the government's finance, agricultural economy and peasant's lives. The quota land tax not only made the government's finance managed according to quota, but also made the benefit of agricultural tax become stagnated and withered. Therefore, as the variety of the normal taxes became less and eventually one single land tax appeared, the constitution of the government's financial revenue became more pluralistic. As the method of collecting tax according to the land measurement was strengthened, the government's benevolent policy toward peasants became closely allied with agricultural production and thus agricultural development was improved. At the same time, collecting tax by means of money made agricultural production have more commercial feature. However, the change of land tax as a whole did not influence peasants'lives and their tax pressure greatly, which showed that the limit between the quota of land-tax collection and the economic development could not be overstepped at will.