A Study On The Effect Of Green Technological Innovation Of "Fee To Tax" For Environmental Protection

As China’s economy enters a stage of high-quality development,the "high input,high consumption,high pollution" crude development method has become a bottleneck that restricts sustainable development."The 14 th Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 Visionary Goals propose to promote green development,implement green technological innovation and build a green technological innovation system that is compatible with the market economy.In this context,it is important to study the impact of environmental protection "fee to tax" on enterprise technological innovation,analyze the mechanism,direction and quality of the effect,summarize the problems and put forward policy recommendations.As a market-based environmental regulation in the taxation field,environmental protection tax can bring a "double dividend" effect.The first dividend refers to the fact that the change of environmental protection fees to taxes will impose stronger emission constraints on enterprises and reduce pollutant emissions for the purpose of environmental protection;the second dividend,which is the focus of this paper,is that the implementation of the "fee-to-tax" policy can promote enterprises’ green technology innovation and thus promote their greening.The second dividend is the focus of this paper,that is,the implementation of the "tax reform" policy can promote enterprises’ green technological innovation,thus promoting their green transformation and achieving sustainable and healthy economic development.Based on Porter’s hypothesis,Externality theory,and Enterprise Competitiveness theory,this paper focuses on the impact of environmental protection "tax reform" on enterprises’ green technological innovation.Based on the quasi-natural experiment of environmental protection tax reform in 2018,the annual data of A-share listed companies in manufacturing industry from 2015 to 2019 are selected,and the difference-in-differences method is used to study the impact of environmental protection "Fee to Tax" on the green technological innovation behavior of enterprises.Subsequently,the triple difference method is used to verify that the increase in emission cost and the increase in violation cost are the two mechanisms that promote the green technology innovation of enterprises,and the heterogeneity is tested by combining the nature of property rights,scale and regional characteristics of enterprises.Finally,policy recommendations are proposed based on the theoretical analysis and empirical results.The results of the study show that: the "Fee to Tax" promotes green technology innovation,and there is a significant positive correlation at the 5% confidence level;in terms of the quality and direction of innovation,the percentage of utility model patents compared to green invention patents increases more significantly after the implementation of the "Fee to Tax".In the mechanism test,it is verified that the increase in emission cost and the increase in violation cost brought about by the "Fee to Tax" are the two transmission mechanisms that promote green technology innovation by enterprises.In the heterogeneity analysis,the results show that the effect of the reform on green innovation is more obvious for non-state enterprises,small-scale enterprises and enterprises in central and western regions.Based on the above study,the following recommendations are made.Firstly,it is recommended to broaden the scope of taxation,optimize tax standards and tax incentives;secondly,multiple measures should be taken to encourage enterprises to engage in substantive innovation;again,the implementation of environmental protection tax should fully consider enterprise heterogeneity and develop differentiated tax policies and financing policies;finally,it is recommended that taxation departments and environmental protection departments strengthen collaboration and co-management and improve the tax collection and management system.