When China was recovering from the mid-nineteenth century rebellions, Sichuan assumed a special position in the expanding fiscal system of the Qing government. The province developed from a poor frontier region into a major contributor to both central government revenue and interprovincial assistance after the 1860s. Different from other regions, however, a large part of this increase in provincial revenue came not from new commercial taxes but from land tax surcharges. But how was the provincial government able to raise these surcharges? No similar augmentation of land tax revenues was achieved in any other province. This talk will argue that these surcharges were initially successful because they were tied to the system of rewarding monetary contributions to government coffers by bestowing official status to the contributor—a system of office or rank selling. Not only did the prospect of social advancement inspire the wealthier elites to collaborate in collecting the surcharges from the less well-endowed landowners, the established bureaucratic procedures of the rank selling system also provided an institutional framework of accountability. After a period of transition, the newly developed mode of tax collection, while successful financially, would help to reproduce and strengthen local gentry power, eventually leading to a new system of tax-farming.