Environmental Protection Tax And Corporate Environmental Protection Investment

In order to cope with the increasingly serious environmental pollution problem and solve the dilemma of pollution control costs under the sewage fee system,the central government has carried out the "environmental protection fee to tax" reform,and officially levied an environmental protection tax on January 1,2018.The environmental protection tax policy is an important means to promote the coordinated development of China’s economic growth and environmental protection and achieve economic green transformation.In this context,enterprises,as the main emitters of pollutants,their response to environmental regulation can have a wide impact on social environmental governance.Therefore,it is of theoretical and practical significance to explore the impact of environmental tax policy on enterprises’ environmental protection investment decisions.This paper summarizes the current domestic and foreign environmental tax policy and corporate environmental investment related research,based on the relevant theory to analyze the mechanism between environmental tax policy and corporate environmental investment,Based on the data of listed companies from 2015 to 2020,the relationship between the two is empirically tested by using Dual Difference Model(DID)and Propensity Score Matching(PSM).The findings are as follows: First,the levy of environmental tax has a significant promoting effect on corporate environmental protection investment.Second,through the impact mechanism test,we further explore the mechanism of agency cost in the relationship between environmental tax policy and corporate environmental protection investment.It is found that the agency cost is part of the intermediary,that is,the environmental protection tax policy will increase the environmental protection investment of enterprises by reducing the agency cost.Third,the characteristics of executive compensation contracts are the key factors that affect the effect of environmental tax.Specifically,the stronger the executive equity incentive,the higher the pay stickiness level,and the larger the internal pay gap,the greater the improvement of environmental protection investment.Fourth,the heterogeneity analysis found that the environmental tax policy on non-state-owned enterprises,low ownership concentration enterprises,high proportion of independent directors of the enterprise environmental protection investment is stronger,and the enterprise prevention of environmental protection investment is stronger.Fifth,the economic consequences of the study found that the levy of environmental taxes can improve the corporate value and competitive position of enterprises by improving the way of environmental investment.Finally,based on empirical analysis,this paper draws conclusions and provides relevant suggestions for the development and improvement of environmental tax policy and the development and transformation of enterprises from the perspective of the government and enterprises themselves.By studying the impact of environmental tax policy on corporate environmental protection investment,this paper not only expands the research on the impact of macro policy on corporate environmental protection investment,but also enriches the research on the implementation effect of environmental tax policy.In the context of macro policy,this paper analyzes the mechanism of agency cost and the moderating effect of executive compensation contract characteristics,which enriches the related research on agency cost and executive compensation.This paper examines the actual effect of "changing environmental fee to tax" on environmental protection investment of enterprises,which not only provides theoretical basis and practical evidence for relevant government departments to improve environmental protection tax policy,but also provides empirical evidence for enterprises to actively carry out environmental protection investment and promote transformation and upgrading.In this paper,the characteristics of executive compensation contract are added to the traditional research framework of environmental regulation policy and corporate environmental investment,and the implementation effect of environmental regulation policy is discussed from the perspective of the combination of social rule of law and corporate governance,which has strong practical significance.