军需、盐税与利益分化：南京国民政府成立初期浙江盐政中的合同包税制-《中国农史》

文章信息/Info

Title:: Military Expenditure, Salt Tax and Benefit?Differentiation: Contract Tax-farming in Zhejiang Salt Administration during Early Nanjing National Government

Author(s):: TANG Ming-sheng; （History Department, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241）

Keywords:: Nanjing National Government; contract tax-farming; salt administration; local society

摘要:: 南京国民政府成立初期，中央政府为筹措军政费用和稳定盐税收入，不仅要求浙江省内的世袭盐商预缴盐款，还将部分地区的盐税交由合同包税商代征。通过这种制度选择，南京国民政府可以经由合同包税商获得预缴盐税，满足了当时战争和政权建设的需要。同时，合同包税商还会在经济利益驱动下整顿区域内盐务，政府因此节省了治理成本。然而，由于合同包税商垄断食盐批发，他们与地方利益群体之间矛盾重重，很快就成为众矢之的。最终，合同包税商在缺少地方政府支持的情况下，其整顿盐务和汲取税收的效果极其有限。从浙江省盐税包办的推行来看，合同包税商在这一时期的制度架构下既受到国家管控，也受到地方利益团体的监督与制衡。

Abstract:: During the early period of Nanjing National Government, to raise military and administrative expenses and stabilize the salt tax revenue, central government required the hereditary salt merchants to prepay salt tax and then selectively introduced contract tax-farming in some areas where the legal salt market was shrinking, so tax contractors acted as agents of the government for salt-tax collecting and salt wholesale. Through such institutional choice, Nationalist Government could get a large amount of prepaid tax from Tax contractors, and it satisfied the requirement of warfare and state-building. Meanwhile, Tax contractors would take the initiative to rectify the salt administration shortcomings in these?regions due to economic profit incentive, and that saved national governance cost. However, because of tax contractors’ salt wholesale monopoly, the conflicts between contractors and the local interest groups were intense. Tax contractors became the target for a lot of criticism as soon as possible. The results they achieved on salt administration rectifying and salt-tax collecting was limited in the absence of support from local government. The practice of contract tax-farming suggests that professional tax contractors were still under the government’s control under the institutional framework of this period. They were also supervised and restricted by other local interest groups.