Lijin (taxation)

The Lijin , also Likin  : 厘金líjīn , was a kind of internal tax in China, which was first introduced as an instrument to finance the mostly locally raised armies to suppress the Taiping uprising .

The Likin tax was first introduced in the Yangzhou area in 1853 by censor Lei Yixian as a way to raise funds for campaigns against local rebels. When the central government was short of income, the imperial court gave the tax legal force and it quickly became an important source of income for the campaigns against the Taiping and Nian uprisings.

The tax was levied as ( value tax ) on goods in transit and on transactions, with a tax rate between 2 and 10 percent. After the Taiping were suppressed in 1864, the Lijin became a permanent feature of the Chinese tax system and became an important source of income for the local government as China lost its collective bargaining autonomy after the conclusion of the Nanking Treaty . In many ways, the tax signified the decentralization of state authority as a result of the Taiping Uprising.

Foreign merchants in the treaty ports believed that the Lijin tax was a barrier to importing foreign goods into China and a violation of the trade agreements that China had concluded with the West. As a result, the foreign merchants made several unsuccessful attempts to pressure the Chinese government to abolish the tax. The tax was abolished by the Chinese government on January 1, 1931.

literature

• Edwin George Beal, Jr .: The Origin of Likin, 1853–1864. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1958.