The Study On Contract Tax Of Qing Dynasty

Contract tax，as the tax concept, is a kind of age-old tax in Chinese history. Itappeared in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, followed in Song Dynasty, and till to Ming and QingDynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, contract tax changed.The article aims to analyze the content of contract tax of Qing Dynasty under themodern contract system. In the Qing Dynasty, contract tax is a tax on sales contract andpawn contract, different from the modern contract tax that refers to sales contract、pawncontract、exchange contract、donation agreement and so on.Since established, contract tax was used to meet the needs of government finance. Inthe1677-1687year during the Qing Kangxi, there were four prefectures of Jiangsuprovince which should turn over a fixed amount of contract tax. In other times, there wasno amount limit of contract tax which should be handed in the state for prefectures ofJiangsu province. Before the Qing Guangxu, all of the amount of levy should be directlysent to the state. During the Qing Guangxu, local government can keep a little tax to meetthe need of local affairs.Between Qing Guangxu and Xuantong, the government of the Qing Dynasty startedthe institutional change under the pressure of the Boxer Indemnity. After that, the systemof contract tax in Jiangsu province also changed soon. However, the state didn’t put somesystem designs into force.In the end, the article agrees David Ricardo’s opinion that Levy taxes have norationality. However, in traditional China, the state has the land and so it has rationality tocollect contract taxes.