A Research On The Northern Song Reducing Peasants' Taxes And Corvée

In the Northern Song Dynasty,taxes and corvée which were borne by peasants were land tax,miscellaneous tax,poll tax,Ke Shuai,He Di,He Mai,Mian Yi Qian,etc.But strictly said,Ke Shuai,He Di,He Mai,Mian Yi Qian as well as certain miscellaneous taxes were not true taxes.Corvée which were borne by peasants were Chai Yi,Yao Yi and Xiang Bing Yi.For lightening the burden of peasants,the Northern Song government adopted a series of measures:sharing taxes reasonably,reducing corvée rationally,unifying weights and measures,creating special residence register,carrying out《Farmland Laws》.If we sort the reducing according to types,there were disaster reducing,war reducing,re-opening reducing,reclaiming wasteland reducing,Yao Yi reducing,amnesty reducing,special area reducing.The focus of all these reducing was Liang Shui(namely land tax),which was main tax then.There were two reducing ways:direct reducing and indirect reducing.Direct reducing was primary and indirect reducing was auxiliary.The Northern Song government frequently reduced taxes and corvée,especially when disasters happened.The amount of reducing was very huge.Each year,the amount of Liang Shui which was reduced only because of disasters was about 10% of the year's Liang Shui.The amount of reducing shortfall tax exceeded million easily,sometimes even more than ten million.From adaptable regulations of Zhi Yi,Zhe Bian and He Mai,we could find that the aim of reducing was to facilitate peasants.Moreover,poor peasants were the key point in no matter which kind of reducing,so that they could share the benefits from reducing.The procedure of disaster reducing was most standard and completely.In general,it needed four steps from starting to finishing,which were reporting disaster→inspection→re-inspection→reduction.Generally speaking,in the Northern Song(besides Emperor Song Huizong time),the reducings were carried out and got fairly good effect.In the Northern Song time,the average land tax tax-rate was about 5.7%;the average miscellaneous tax...