Salt commission

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Salt Commission

The Tang government suffered a significant loss of tax revenue after the An Lushan Rebellion. The equal field system became an ineffective way to raise tax money as peasants began working for wealthy landowners as tenant farmers and servants. Also, Buddhist monasteries acquired large amounts of taxable land. To compensate for the loss of land tax a new plan was developed to enforce the monopoly on salt. The Tang government chose salt for it’s new tax system for two reasons. First of all, the imperial government controlled all major salt production areas. Also, salt was a basic necessity in Chinese diet which almost guaranteed a constant market. To enforce this monopoly, a salt commission was established in 758. To orchestrate this new commission, a salt commissioner (yantie shi) was appointed as a new post in the government. The salt commissioner was a financial specialist, which was uncharacteristic of the Tang unspecialized political administration. The basic system of the salt commission was quite simple. The government stated that all salt had to be purchased from licensed producers at regional offices. Salt purchases could only be made by licensed merchants where upon the government would add significant surcharges. The merchants then passed the tax burden upon consumers. The salt commission allowed the government to collect taxes even in areas where it had limited authority by indirectly taxing the population through merchants. The salt commission collected fifty percent of the total tax revenue within a few years of it’s inception. The peasants were the most affected by this new policy, as they spent a higher percentage of their incomes on basic food goods.