按亩征税 / Per-Mu Land Taxation

Definition

Per-mu land taxation / 按亩征税 is the fiscal policy notice in Hanji 868 where the court instructs commanderies and kingdoms to tax landholding households by the mu, making land area rather than only older household or person categories visible as a tax base.

Current Synthesis

Hanji 868 records the policy as an August 6, 165 CE order to commanderies and kingdoms. The source treats it as historically significant because it is described as the first such instruction, but also as frustratingly compressed because the chronicle gives little explanation of implementation, rates, resistance, or fiscal consequences.

The concept is currently a narrow policy marker, not a complete Chinese tax-history page. Its importance in the wiki is twofold: it identifies a land-area-based fiscal move inside Emperor Huan’s reign, and it creates a case for 政策制度记载压缩, where a major institutional change appears in the narrative as a very short notice.

Key Claims

• The Hanji 868 notice marks land area as a tax base by ordering per-mu taxation of landholders.
• The order is framed as empire-wide administrative instruction to commanderies and kingdoms.
• The source treats the notice as important but underexplained by the chronicle.
• The current evidence does not establish tax rate, implementation mechanism, or fiscal yield.
• The concept belongs to fiscal state capacity and institutional history more than harem or faction politics.

Evidence

• Policy notice: Hanji 868 says that on August 6 the court first instructs commanderies and kingdoms to tax landholding households by the mu.
• Institutional compression: Hanji 868 notes that the policy receives only a brief chronicle notice despite its apparent significance.
• Fiscal interpretation: Hanji 868 uses the notice to discuss the limits of person-centered political narrative for reconstructing institutions.

Counterevidence & Qualifications

• The source does not supply enough detail to generalize across all Han taxation, local compliance, administrative technique, or revenue effects.
• “First” is preserved as the source’s wording around the order; the page does not independently reconstruct every earlier or later land-tax precedent.
• The current concept should remain linked to its chronicle-notice evidence until additional sources broaden the fiscal history.

What Changed

• Created the concept from Hanji 868’s August 6 per-mu taxation notice.
• Recorded the policy as a fiscal-state marker and as evidence for chronicle policy compression.

Related Concepts

• 税收执行能力 - broader fiscal-capacity frame in which land measurement and taxable base matter.
• 政策制度记载压缩 - historiographical problem exposed by the short tax notice.
• 秦国行政标准化 - comparative administrative-measurement frame where territory, land, and standards become legible to the state.
• 名器合法性 - different formal-order concept; both show how institutional categories shape political reality.