The disgraced official I took care of was actually Zhu Houcong's childhood friend.

Chapter 416

"Teacher, I don't understand..."

Yang Shengzhai hesitated.

“You don’t need to know what to do. I’ll tell you later. If you’re worried, you can write a letter to your grandfather and ask for his opinion.”

Zhou Chu smiled.

Zhou Chu had already gone this far; if Yang Shengzhai still disagreed, he would be ungrateful.

"Students are completely at the teacher's beck and call."

Yang Shengzhai bowed and said.

"You go down first."

Zhou Chu looked at Yang Shengzhai and said.

After Yang Shengzhai left, Zhou Chu looked at Yan Song.

"What does Lord Yan think of this man?"

Zhou Chu smiled.

"Sir, you really know how to choose people. Young Master Yang is the perfect candidate. His background and status are sufficient, and he is also your student. With such a status, he can do whatever he wants."

Yan Song laughed.

"That's not enough. I want Lord Yan to implement the performance evaluation system while raising the commercial tax rate in the entire Jiangnan Province to 10%, and to make the commercial tax rate one of the standards for performance evaluation."

Zhou Chu looked at Yan Song and said what he had been planning for a long time.

Upon hearing this, Yan Song felt a chill run down his spine. He had already encountered such resistance in implementing the performance evaluation system. If he were to increase commercial taxes, the resistance he would face would be even greater.

The Ming Dynasty levied a commercial tax of one-thirtieth of the total tax, but this system is now practically defunct and can hardly be collected. However, since the implementation of the performance evaluation system in Southern Zhili, this situation has improved. Because of the performance evaluation system, officials in Southern Zhili have been able to collect all the commercial taxes that had been uncollected for many years.

Although it's only one-thirtieth of the tax, the total commercial profits are enormous; even one-thirtieth of the tax is a huge number.

However, Zhou Chu was not satisfied with the thirty-one tax. Since Nan Zhili was able to collect one-thirty of the commercial tax, Jiangnan Province could raise it to one-tenth, or one-tenth of the commercial tax.

The 10% commercial tax is just a trial run by Zhou Chu. If the 10% commercial tax can be collected, it is not impossible to increase it to 20% or 30% in the future.

Merchants earn far more money than farmers toil in the fields, sometimes even on completely different levels. The reason the imperial court was short of money in the past was because it completely misidentified the entity responsible for collecting taxes.

Back in the Hongwu era, when Emperor Hongwu Zhu Yuanzhang had just established the Ming Dynasty, in order to allow the people to recuperate and thrive, to enable merchants to better connect the north and south, and to allow commerce to inject vitality into the entire Ming Dynasty's economy, he set the commercial tax at one-thirtieth of the total tax.

Whether later emperors wanted to change the system or not, even if they did, the civil officials would vehemently oppose it, and their reasons would be very compelling, arguing that the ancestral system could not be violated.

"This matter is probably very difficult, sir."

When Yan Song said this, his mouth felt dry. He had to say it with great difficulty, because saying this in front of Zhou Chu was tantamount to admitting his incompetence and that he could not handle the matter well.

Such words would only disappoint his superiors, but even so, Yan Song had to consider reality. In Yan Song's view, it was already extremely difficult to fully implement the performance evaluation system. After all, Jiangnan Province was not the Southern Zhili Province. The officials here called themselves a faction, and they would definitely band together to resist the implementation of the performance evaluation system.

In reality, Yan Song wasn't without options, but he needed a certain level of authority. Many things required Zhou Chu's approval and decisions, and Yan Song wasn't sure about many of these authority levels.

"Therefore, we must pay attention to the methods and approaches when doing things. The original commercial tax was one-thirtieth. If any official could collect commercial tax, one-thirtieth of that tax would be given as a reward, and the rest would go to the court and into the national treasury. In this way, how could those officials not do their best?"

Zhou Chu looked at Yan Song and said.

Yan Song's eyes lit up immediately upon hearing this.

"Your Excellency is truly farsighted. In this way, I won't even need to command those officials. For their own benefit, they will find a way to collect these commercial taxes. However, I fear that some people might exploit those small merchants too much for money."