按净利计征的职业所得税 / Profit-Based Occupational Tax

Definition

按净利计征的职业所得税 / profit-based occupational tax is the 10 CE Xin levy described in Hanji 639, under which specified earners declare occupational receipts and costs and surrender one tenth of the stated net profit.

Current Synthesis

The source distinguishes this levy from a simple head tax, land tax, or gross turnover charge. It applies to people earning through mining, hunting, fishing, herding, textile and garment work, crafts, medicine, ritual or divinatory services, and petty trade. Local officials are said to subtract costs, calculate profit, and collect one part in ten.

That structure makes “income-tax analogue” a useful descriptive comparison, especially because the taxable base is represented as profit after costs. It does not by itself prove that Wang Mang invented the world’s first income tax. The episode compares the measure with Britain’s 1799 income tax, but supplies neither a comprehensive cross-civilizational survey nor enough administrative detail to establish global priority, assessment accuracy, enforcement consistency, or incidence.

The levy also belongs to a broader control package. Penalties for uncultivated land, treeless urban residences, and non-work, confiscation and official labor for noncompliance, a liquor-monopoly proposal, and weapon restrictions show fiscal policy operating beside labor discipline, commodity control, and coercion. This makes the concept an early tax-base design case, not evidence of a modern liberal income-tax system.

Key Claims

• The taxable unit is represented as occupational net profit after costs rather than landholding, persons, or gross sales alone.
• The source spans extractive, pastoral, craft, medical, ritual, and petty-commercial livelihoods.
• Self-declaration and local cost assessment create an administrative-verification problem even though the episode does not describe the accounting system in detail.
• A one-tenth rate is paired with confiscation and one year of official labor for noncompliance in the source’s account.
• The measure is embedded in a wider Wang Mang program of economic, labor, and social control.
• “Early income-tax analogue” is better supported than “world’s first income tax.”

Evidence

• Tax base: Hanji 639 cites “除其本，计其利” to describe deduction of costs and calculation of profit.
• Occupational reach: Hanji 639 lists mining, hunting, fishing, herding, textile work, crafts, medicine, divination, and petty trade.
• Rate and enforcement: Hanji 639 gives a one-tenth levy and describes confiscation plus one year of official labor for failure to pay.
• Broader control setting: Hanji 639 places the levy beside land-use, tree-planting, work, liquor-monopoly, and civilian-weapons rules.
• Priority framing: Hanji 639 calls Wang Mang an income-tax ancestor and compares the measure with 1799 Britain.

Counterevidence & Qualifications

The source is a podcast summary of a historical text rather than a comparative tax-history demonstration. “所得税” is a modern analytic label; the listed levy may differ from later comprehensive personal income taxes in taxpayer definition, income aggregation, deductions, assessment, withholding, exemptions, appeals, and institutional purpose. Exact occupational wording, administrative reach, compliance, and economic effect remain source-scoped. The global-priority claim therefore remains unestablished.

What Changed

• Created the concept from Hanji 639’s cost-deducted one-tenth occupational-profit levy.
• Qualified the episode’s “first income tax” hook as an analogy rather than a settled priority claim.

Related Concepts

• 人头税 - differs because liability is attached to a person rather than measured occupational profit.
• 按亩征税 - differs because its base is cultivated area rather than occupational net income.
• 税基优先于资源独占 - related alternative in which government taxes private profit instead of operating the underlying activity itself.
• state resource monopoly - adjacent control route illustrated by the episode’s liquor-monopoly proposal.
• 王莽改制 - broader policy field containing the levy and its coercive enforcement setting.