<資料・研究ノート>タイの地租改正について

Abstract

This note tries to follow up the process of land tax reform in Thailand from 1874 to 1906. The reform could be understood in the context of fiscal reform. The fiscal reform can be summed up as the dynamic process to eliminate tax farming system, which used to foster groups antagonistic to the national integration policy of King Chulalongkorn. In other words, in order to bring about the national integration, it was necessary to prepair the material condition of the local administration reform. Land tax collection had been traditionally administered by krom Na (Ministry of Agriculture). During the reign of King Mongkut, Krom Na had changed into almost the same status of tax farmer, by contracting to pay the fixed rate of tax to the treasury every year. The task of land tax reform, was therefore, to integrate Krom Na into the bureaucratic system again and to decrease the tax leakage from Krom Na and local officials, by improving the collecting system. The next step was to eliminate Krom Na from the tax collecting system. From 1888 to 1896, confrontation between Krom Na and the integration group of the king concerning the method of collecting the land tax seemed to occur often. After the victory of the latter over the former, the land tax was collected by Phrakhlang (Ministry of Finance) in place of Krom Na. The third step was to revise the tax rate to increase the revenue. After the success in amending the provisions of the Bowring Treaty which had fixed the tax rate, the revenue of land tax doubled all of a sudden. Partly because of the delay of issuing title deeds and partly because of its separation from the tax collecting administration, the land tax reform in Thailand did not directly contribute to the settling of the titles to land.