Duzhiguan's Millennium Account Book

One account can crush a dynasty. Zhang He, who was admitted to the tax bureau in 2017, suddenly "dreamed" back to the 10th year of Zhenyuan of the Tang Dynasty when he was writing at his desk on the eve of the "15th Five-Year Plan" and became a ninth-level bookkeeper in charge of money and food in Zheng County, Huazhou. Three days after taking office, he hit a dead end: the court had set a price of 500 pence per shi for requisitioning grain, but the market price was as high as 650 pence. One hundred and twenty financial holes hang above the head - if the people are taxed, the people will revolt, and if public funds are misappropriated, they will be punished. Relying on the accounting sense of a modern tax cadre, he used salt as a bargaining chip to deal with the powerful and temporarily relieve his pressing needs. But when he opened the old account books of the county government, he saw the shocking truth: land annexation, loss of tax base, and a sharp increase in household defections... Under the gorgeous robe of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, there was a financial body on the verge of collapse. How does the "Two Tax Law" deform during its implementation? Why did the strange circle of "Huang Zongxi's Law" occur thousands of years ago? When the central government's finances are tight, how will the pressure along the bureaucracy eventually crush the farmers at the bottom? Zhang He decided to do a thorough "financial audit" for this dynasty, starting from the clearing of the land. Relying on modern fiscal and taxation thinking such as value-added tax principles, budget management, and tax services, he searched for a way out of the shackles of history, but he did not know that the abacus he had set had already attracted the attention of the prime minister in Chang'an City, and even touched the intricate network of interests... Dissecting history from a hard-core fiscal and taxation perspective, front-line tax collectors travel through thousands of years to settle the accounts of a large country. This is not a time-travel counterattack, but a financial autopsy report on why the prosperous Tang Dynasty declined, completed by a modern "duzhiguan" at the historical scene.