淸末巴縣鄕村部の徴稅請負と訴訟の關係 --特に抬墊をめぐって--

Abstract

In the Qing era, taxes were paid in principle with zifengtougui 自封投櫃, that is to say, a taxpayer himself was obligated to go to the county government office and throw his taxes into the gui 櫃 (tax box) set up there. But, in reality, contract tax collection was widespread, and tax collection depended to a remarkable extent on these contracts. Furthermore, in Ba county in the last years of the Qing era, there was another tax collection system called the taidian 抬墊 that played an important role in the tax collecting service. In this system a liangchai 糧差 (tax runner) and xiangyue 鄕約 (local assistant) paid the unpaid tax on behalf of taxpayer after the tax payment period was over and the gui had been taken away. This paper is an attempt to examine taidian by focusing on the processes of the system in relation to lawsuits as the author bases his argument on legal documents that he has discovered in the Ba County archive. The following conclusion was reached. In the case of taidian, when the liangchai and xiangyue failed to collect repayment from the taxpayer, they frequently filed a suit with the county court against him. On the other hand, many of the taxpayers were wealthy, and they also filed suits when they felt they were in the right. This is seen in the fact that the liangchai and xiangyue acted to collect the payment from taxpayers with help of the local government and taxpayers acted to evade loses from collection by changing land registrations and re-determinations of tax obligations. Both sides intended to solve administrative problems concerning the taidian with lawsuits. This confirms that such lawsuits were an integral aspect of the tax collection service and included in the tax collection process. In this sense, the scope of these lawsuits widely encompassed administrative activities.