Research On The Impact Of China’s Environmental Protection Tax On Enterprises’ Green Investment And Countermeasures

The ecological and environmental issues are not only related to the future development of a country,but also to the daily life of the people.With the development of the times,the crude economic growth method of the past is no longer suitable for our present-day development needs,and it is now urgent to establish a green,low-carbon and cyclical economic system.In this way,we can promote the transformation of old and new dynamics and achieve high-quality development,while effectively preventing ecological and environmental risks,actively preventing and controlling ecological pollution,and safeguarding the green hills for the benefit of future generations.It is against this background that China’s environmental tax was introduced,and has been in place for more than four years now.As a tax aimed at improving the environment and reducing pollutant emissions,it follows the polluter pays principle on the one hand,and taxes some of the pollutant emissions;on the other hand,it can also draw the attention of taxpayers to a certain extent,prompting them to make green investments and other behaviours,thus achieving the purpose of energy-saving and emission reduction.The main focus of this paper is to explore the impact of environmental taxation on green investment through qualitative and quantitative analysis.This paper will be able to look at the implementation of the environmental tax from this perspective,and on the other hand,it will be able to make some policy recommendations on the problems that exist in this process.Firstly,this paper collates and analyses existing research at home and abroad,and analyses the mechanism of how the environmental tax affects green investment by combining externality theory,pollution paradise hypothesis theory and Porter’s hypothesis theory.The results of the analysis show that whether the environmental protection tax has a facilitating or inhibiting effect on corporate green investment depends mainly on the size of the crowding-out effect and the compensation effect.Moreover,there is some heterogeneity in the impact of environmental taxes on green investment,depending on the region in which the company is located.Next,the paper reviews the history of the reform from sewage charges to environmental taxes,and introduces the current status of environmental taxes in terms of the overall level of collection,the structure of tax revenues and the collection situation in each region.This is followed by a summary of the implementation of the environmental tax in terms of emission reductions and enterprises,and concludes with a summary of the overall situation of the environmental tax and the existing problems.Once again,in terms of empirical analysis,this paper first uses factor analysis to construct a system of green investment indicators for enterprises,followed by a sample of some listed heavy polluters from 2010 to 2019,and establishes a fixed-effects model.Firstly,the impact of the environmental protection tax(fee)levy on the existence of corporate green investment was tested,and then a heterogeneity analysis was conducted to test the impact of the environmental protection tax(fee)levy on the existence of green investment made by enterprises in different regions.Finally,dummy variables were introduced to verify the effect of the change in environmental protection fees to taxes on green investment.The results show that the imposition of environmental taxes(fees)does have a positive effect on green investment,although the effect is limited and there is regional heterogeneity.In addition,the empirical results also show that the change from sewage charges to environmental taxes can promote green investment,which is tantamount to demonstrating the positive relevance of the change from sewage charges to environmental taxes from the perspective of green investment.Finally,this paper analyses and summarises the experience of Japan,Denmark and other countries,and based on the previous analysis and discussion,makes some suggestions on how to better improve China’s environmental protection tax policy,how to establish a green tax system in China,and how to better promote green investment by enterprises.