Research On The Impact Of Environmental Protection Tax Reform On Enterprise Upgrading

Tax is an important means of regulating the economy.Environmental Taxation is used by more and more countries to coordinate the relationship between economy and environment because of its characteristics of internalizing environmental costs and regulating the environmental behavior of taxpayers and consumers through price transmission machine,it is also an important indicator of a country’s green development.China’s environmental protection tax and charge system has experienced the evolution of sewage charges and environmental protection tax system one after another.The change of environmental protection charge into tax in 2018 is a milestone in promoting China’s green tax system,the purpose is to urge enterprises to control pollution by strict taxation system,and to force enterprises to upgrade and promote the construction of ecological civilization.So far,China’s environmental protection tax policy has been implemented for a period of time,timely evaluation of the effectiveness of the policy is conducive to further improve the tax system to provide a scientific basis.This thesis mainly uses the method of normative analysis and empirical analysis to study whether the 2018 environmental protection tax reform can promote the upgrading of Chinese enterprises.The first part introduces the background and significance of this thesis,defines the key concepts used in this thesis,reviewing the relevant literature,and puts forward the innovation points of this thesis.The second part demonstrates the influence mechanism of environmental tax on enterprise upgrading from the angle of the influence of environmental tax on cost,technology innovation and management level.The third part introduces the development of environmental protection tax and charge system,and summarizes the existing problems.The fourth part uses the micro-data(2015-2020)of China’s pollution-intensive listed companies to do empirical research,then,we use the propensity score matching(PSM)method to find a control group similar to the reform enterprises in order to eliminate the sample selection problem.Finally,we estimate the true effect of environmental tax reform on the upgrading of enterprises by using the difference-in-differences model(DID).The fifth part put forward some policy recommendations based on the results of the above empirical study and current situation of China’s environmental protection tax.The conclusion of this thesis is as follows:In general,China’s environmental protection tax reform is weak,not as expected to promote the upgrading of enterprises.This indicates that the environmental protection tax reform follows the principle of "Tax-charge translation",and the tax-charge burden borne by enterprises has no substantial difference,so it can not create new incentives for enterprises to upgrade,the effect of environmental tax reform varies with the nature of the enterprise itself,and the reform has a significant restraining effect on the upgrading of enterprises in the midwest and a significant promoting effect on the upgrading of high-tech intensive enterprises.However,there is no obvious impact on the upgrading of enterprises in the east and the upgrading of low-tech-intensive enterprises,and the impact of the reform on the upgrading of enterprises does not show obvious differences in property rights.The impact of Environmental Protection Tax Reform on enterprise upgrading is not lagging behind.Obviously,the environmental protection tax policy needs to be carried out continuously in our country,and the adjustment strength needs to be strengthened.The innovation of this thesis is to change the method of evaluating the effect of Environmental Tax on financial performance,green innovation,total factor productivity of enterprises.First,this thesis selects indicators from the financial performance,innovation,management level and other angles.Then,we use the factor analysis method to build enterprise upgrading indicators,an overall assessment of the environmental tax on the overall impact of enterprise upgrading.In addition,in the empirical research part,this thesis introduced the PSM method based on DID model to match the control group with highly similar characteristics,which eliminated the existence of the sample selection bias to some extent,the accuracy of the empirical results is improved.