816 FINANCIAL REFORM A ND THE ECONOMY
an additional 100 p'if of taxes, it would spread it out among all the provinces
simply on the basis of the amount of registered land, without providing any reg-
ular or uniform standards. The provincial governor would set quotas for each
administrative district, each district would divide the quota among the number
of household heads (in the household registers), and the household heads would
then allocate taxes among the peasants. In every step of this process officials,
clerks, and runners raked in profits from the transaction or demanded payoffs
and bribes, increasing the burden on taxpayers beyond the legal limit. In tradi-
tional tribute particularly, the people did not know what the quotas were, and
officials and clerks took advantage of them to set arbitrary rates and to make
profits every time tax items were shipped and transferred. Even if the clerks were
honest, they had to collect more than was legally due to provide a surplus for
wastage.^3
Furthermore, if tribute products were no longer produced where the tribute
was assessed, the peasants were forced to purchase them through contractors.
More likely, neither officials nor peasants even bothered to ask whether the trib-
ute items were local products or not because tribute taxes had come to be assessed
only on the basis of the amount of registered cultivated land and the number of
able-bodied males in the district, and the district's faulty quota had become a
permanent basis for the tax. Eventually, the clerks were given full leeway in fill-
ing their pockets at the expense of both the state and the people.^4
The whole process of mobilizing the country to raise this extra tax would "dis-
rupt the population of all eight provinces, make the heads of households run
back and forth, force the magistrates and clerks to circulate communications,
increase the circulation of paperwork in dunning people for taxes, and expand
the opportunities for bribery."5 The net result of this kind of supplementary, ad
hoc taxation would end up costing the people no less than 200,000-300,000
p'il, for a net return to the central government of only roo p'i! of taxes. The
result of almost daily repetitions of this process would be to destroy people's
peace of mind, and since the regular salaries of the officials were too low to
begin with, and the clerks and runners had no regular salaries at all, they had to
use public funds, corruption, and bribery to support themselves. The truly hon-
est clerks and runners ended up in destitution; those who were reasonably hon-
est were forced into corruption just to exist; the most avaricious and corrupt of
their colleagues simply became wealthy.
Yu concluded that since "our customs have become like this, and the legal
system caused it to be this way," it was not clear that the taedong system would
be sufficient to eliminate the arbitrary and unregulated additional taxes on the
population. Since the current version ofthe taedong system (up to 1658, the last
point Yu discussed in his work) involved an estimation of the amount of funds
the state needed and a calculation of the tax rate on land in rice or cloth to raise
those funds, it was a rational method to eliminate the need for additional ad hoc
levies. Nevertheless, since this method of producing revenues to finance what
the government felt it was necessary to spend (yangch 'ul wiip) was contrary to