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3 Registration for the Land Tax and the Collection of Land Tax The Imperial Land Tax and Imperial Land Registration Practices A good deal of the Ch’ing Imperial Land Law was based, above all, on the need to protect the land tax. The Ch’ing authorities supported the requirements of the law by running a very complex and highly bureaucratic land tax registration system, with a detailed land tax archive in every county. As with the Imperial Land Law, the Ch’ing had inherited the great bulk of the system from their predecessor dynasties : in particular, the Ch’ing land tax registration system was in no signiÀcant way different from that in use under the Ming. The normal way that a citizen would become a land tax payer would be by the purchase of a piece of land tax paying land, thus becoming the imperial grant holder by substitution for the vendor. The normal way that sale of land tax paying land would be initiated, with the concomitant substitution of the purchaser for the vendor as the land tax payer, would be for the vendor to issue a land deed to the purchaser. This would be a simple handwritten document on a single sheet of paper, giving the details of the sale, including the tax registration details, the price paid, and the names of the purchaser and vendor (see Plate 1). This deed having been issued, the purchaser was at liberty to go to the County Magistracy and have the land re-registered for land tax in his own name. At the Magistracy, the Àrst thing done was for a memorial (kai mei, 契尾: see Deed 8 and Plate 2) to be Àlled out by the Land Tax Registry Clerk in duplicate, giving the essential facts of the deed (description of the property, the price paid, and the names of vendor and purchaser, with the Land Tax Register entry details). The memorial was Àlled in on pre-printed forms which contained two copies of the text to be Àlled in: a column down the centre between the two texts was where the essential facts were written a third time. An ad valorem processing fee was charged by the County Magistracy, at the rate of four per cent of the purchase 72 The Imperial and Customary Land Laws price.1 When this fee had been paid, the two copies of the memorial were chopped across the line of the central column with the red seal of the Magistracy, so that each copy had half the seal on it. This was so that, after the two copies were divided off from each other, the ofÀce copy could be checked against the purchaser’s copy if necessary, by matching the two parts of the seal and the two parts of the centrally divided column of text (see Plate 2). When all this was completed, the paper was cut down the centre, so dividing the central column of text between the two copies. The Magistracy seal would again be chopped onto the documents so that part of the seal was printed on the original deed and part on one copy of the memorial, again so that the two documents could be married back if necessary (on Plate 2, this is the half-seal to be seen on the right-hand side: on Plate 1 it is the half-seal on the lefthand side). The two copies of the memorial shared a single unique number, again to facilitate checking the two copies against each other. When the memorial had been issued, the processing fee paid, and the two copies of the memorial cut apart, the Magistracy Land Tax Clerk would chop the purchaser ’s original land deed with the Magistracy red seal as evidence that this payment had been duly made and the memorial duly issued (on Plate 1, this is the seal centred on the fourth column of characters). This seal was put over the place in the deed where the purchase price was stated.2 This having been done, the land in question would be removed from the Land Tax Registry entry of the vendor and entered onto the entry of the purchaser, with the Àgure for the land tax leviable from the two parties duly adjusted. The purchaser then had to pay in advance the land tax for the upcoming year. A demand note (差催) was prepared; when it was paid in full, the note was chopped as proof that it...

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