Analysis Of The Impact Of Environmental Protection Tax On Technological Innovation Of Heavy-polluting Enterprises

In the process of exploring the path of sustainable development in all countries,the "economy-environment" vicious cycle is a major problem that they have to face.The economic development of China has also caused excessive waste of resources and serious environmental pollution.With the continuous improvement of national attention to ecological environmental protection,the concept of "green" has been reflected in various fields related to development issues.China implemented the environmental protection tax in January 2018.Although its original purpose is to protect the environment,at the same time,can it prompt enterprises to actively implement technological innovation? In addition,because the enterprise is facing environmental policy represented by the environmental protection tax of environmental pressure,to make up for the inadequacy of enterprise funds,and encourage enterprises to be the environmental protection enterprise through technical innovation,the government would offer certain subsidy,then what effect do the government subsidies have between the environmental protection tax and the technology innovation ?Therefore,it will be the focus of this paper to analyze the impact of environmental protection tax on technological innovation and introduce government subsidy as the moderating variable.According to the relevant concepts impact mechanism,this paper finds that the environmental protection tax makes enterprises to adjust product mix and improve product processes under the pressure of environmental costs to promote technological innovation;government subsidies can strengthen the positive relationship between the environmental protection tax and technological innovation;enterprises will rely on government subsidies,reducing investment,and leading to rent-seeking activities,eventually squeeze out innovation funds.The negative effect of government subsidies will weaken the positive effect of environmental protection tax on technological innovation.Since the environmental protection tax has been changed from the pollution discharge fee through the principle of “tax burden shifting”,the levy standards of the environmental protection tax have basically“shifted” the pollution discharge fee system,which provides a basis for the empirical analysis of using pollution discharge data to replace environmental protection tax in the following.This paper uses the data of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in heavy pollution industries from 2013 to 2019 as the research sample,and uses environmental protection taxes and fees as the explanatory variable,government subsidies as the moderating variable,technological innovation measured by R&D investment relative to operating income as the explained variable.and then the number of R&D people is used as a substitute variable for technological innovation to test the robustness.At the same time,the sample companies were divided into sub-samples.The results show that environmental protection tax can promote technological innovation,and government subsidies have a negative moderating effect between environmental protection tax and technological innovation.So,this paper puts forward the following suggestions: the government should gradually improve the environmental protection tax collection standards in non-eastern regions,define the government subsidy standards,refine the selection criteria for subsidies,and comprehensively consider the mixed effect of the dual policies;the enterprise should take a correct view of the cost pressure brought by the environmental protection tax,and uses government subsidies reasonably.