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A person registered as a land tax payer through a series of complicated procedures. The system assumed that when the head of household died, the registration would be cancelled and reissued in the names of the new heads of households. However, since re-establishing a registration was expensive, descendants usually kept the registered property in an ancestral trust in the original name. The collection of Land Tax was usually smooth as the Magistracy was staffed by locals, but the collection of rent by the tei kwat owner could lead to conflicts. After the takeover of the New Territories, the British colonial government conducted a Block Crown Lease Survey, brought the Registry closer to the people, made the establishment of an entry in the Crown Rent Roll free of charge and simplified the procedures.

Under Imperial Land Law in traditional China all land belonged to the Emperor. No person could occupy arable land without an imperial grant. The imperial authorities acknowledged the existence of an imperial grant by accepting land tax from the grantee. Only the land tax-payer or his short-term tenant had the right to till the ground and no intermediate lordship is allowed between the cultivator and the emperor. Grants of land could be revoked if the land had changed significantly in its usage. Sometimes permissions were given to grantees to open land. The land has to be surveyed periodically to ensure that all arable were registered. However by the late nineteenth century, the surveys were done only very occasionally: coupled with the freezing of the tax quota in 1711, this meant that many people were evading land tax and a good deal of the Imperial Land Law was unenforced.

This chapter explores the diversity of joint ownership practice. Records compiled in the course of preparing for the Meiji Land Tax Reforms of the 1870s show practices that range from a variety of joint ownership regimes to multilayered fragmentation of rights to a single plot. Noted land tax reform scholar Fukushima Masao divided these practices into two broad categories: multilayered land rights and redistributive practices. This diversity in practices challenges some of the widespread beliefs about the relationship between specific rights in land and incentives: the belief that joint ownership necessarily entails inefficient, counterproductive incentive structures as well as beliefs about the relationship between joint ownership and environmental conditions.