What reform movements were there in the Tang Dynasty?

There were two political reform movements in the Tang Dynasty:

1 exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous fees are all normalized;

2 ordinary people's homes are ruined.

The national expropriation mode matching the land equalization system is "rent-and-mediocrity". Rent is a fixed annual rent; The agent serves the government every year; The adjustment is actually a family tax. These three taxes are paid in kind, and the rent is paid directly to the valley, not silk; Pay cloth, linen and the like according to local conditions. In 780 AD, Yang Yan, the prime minister of Tang Dezong, reformed and replaced the "rent-and-mediocrity" with "two tax laws".

The original intention of this reform is to increase government revenue naked. The government publicly announced that the guiding ideology of this reform is to "live within our means" and how much money it plans to spend from the people. Although the government announced that it would change to "housing tax" and "farmland tax", the former "rent-and-mediocrity" has actually changed into "two taxes" and unreasonable exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes other than rent-and-mediocrity, such as "young crops money", "field money" and "summer money" made in Tang Daizong. The so-called "rent-free handyman" actually only abolished these exorbitant taxes, and the actual tax collection did not decrease at all. Wang Fuzhi's criticism of the essence of the two tax laws in those years hit the nail on the head: "The law of two taxes is to take temporary extra-legal measures and collect them in the law", which turned those extortion without justifiable reasons into formal tax items.

The most terrible thing is that ordinary people used to pay in kind; And the new "two taxes", the people must pay in currency. In agricultural countries, letting ordinary people pay taxes with money is equivalent to greatly increasing the burden on ordinary people. For more than 30 years before the implementation of the two tax laws, prices in the Tang Dynasty remained high all the way; After the implementation of the two tax laws, prices have been falling, making people miserable and their families ruined. For example, one or two years before the implementation of the two tax laws, a silk can be sold for 3000-4000 pence. By 796, it could only be sold for more than 65,438+0,500 pence. By 805, it had dropped to only 800 pence. The price of rice is also falling all the way. Around 785 AD, brown rice in Guanzhong area sold more than 30 articles in normal years, while good rice sold only 70 articles at the highest. Around 8 10 A.D., in case of a bumper harvest, the rice price even dropped to 2 pence, while around 770 A.D., the rice price in normal years was 1000 or 800 pence per barrel. The fundamental reason for such a sharp drop in prices is that the imperial court has enacted two tax laws, requiring ordinary people to pay taxes with money, which has led to the emergence of expensive goods and cheap goods in the market. The more effectively the government implements these two tax laws, the cheaper the agricultural products produced by ordinary people, and the more they are actually exploited. Bai Juyi and Han Yu are fierce opponents of the two tax laws, but it is useless. The country likes these two tax laws, which makes the national treasury Man Cang. After the demise of the Tang Dynasty, the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties still had a soft spot for the two tax laws.