In addition to the Song Dynasty we are familiar with, its prosperous economy and commerce were also at the pinnacle of ancient times. Since there is more money, there are bound to be many officials who evade taxes. So what method did the Song Dynasty use to prevent officials from evading taxes? Today, Lao Wei will take everyone to talk about the story behind this.

In response to tax evasion, the rulers of the Song Dynasty invented a structure dedicated to auditing work. At the beginning of the founding of the Song Dynasty, Zhao Kuangyin made reforms to the Tang Dynasty's Three Lives and Six Ministries system, adding Zhongshu Menxia and the Privy Council to manage politics and military affairs respectively. Among them, in order to prevent officials from tax evasion, Zhao Kuangyin also established the "Three Ministries" as the central supreme audit institution. The "Sanbu Gouyuan" could initially be in charge of the country's account books and records for supervision. Therefore, in the later period, the three ministries were divided into three divisions: "Salt and Iron", "Duzhi" and "Hubu", each in charge of Relevant account information.

It can be said that the establishment of the "Sanbu Gouyuan" largely solved the tax evasion problem in the early and mid-Song Dynasty. However, later, because of the Song Dynasty rulers' focus on centralization, those who controlled the country's financial life The "Sanbu Gouyuan" has undergone more than 60 reforms and reorganizations, large and small, which has greatly affected the formation of this stable system.

Therefore, by the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty, the "Three Ministries" could no longer effectively control the country's taxation issues. Without supervision, corruption prevailed, the country had a large number of redundant troops, and local governments still At this time, the Northern Song Dynasty needed a complete reform to solve this problem.

So after Song Shenzong came to power, he began to rely on Prime Minister Wang Anshi to start a reform, known in history as the Yuanfeng Reform. The most important of these is to restore the system of three provinces and six ministries, and all the rights of the "three ministries and six ministries" are assigned to the three provinces and six ministries. At the same time, the "three ministries and six ministries" are disbanded, successfully solving the problem. At that time, there were growing problems of tax evasion and corruption.

The "Sanbu Gouyuan" is an institution that was established and abolished along with the Three Divisions. Although it has lost its original responsibilities in the later period, its establishment and performance It showed that people in the Song Dynasty attached great importance to corruption and took a series of anti-corruption measures, which were very advanced ideas and measures in ancient times.