| After more than 40 years of rapid development of reform and opening up,the crude growth model is no longer sustainable,and China’s economy has entered the“new normal” stage,with its annual double-digit growth reduced to lower marginal growth,so it is urgent to promote the upgrading of enterprises and the overall highquality development of the economy.Taxation system is a series of rules including taxation regime,taxation regulations,taxation administration and taxation allocation formulated by the sovereign state in order to realize the state functions and regulate the economy.As an important grip of macroeconomic regulation,its role is more prominent in the critical transition period.However,under the reform idea of “crossing the river by feeling the stones”,the taxation system of China has been in a state of fragmented repair and improvement for a long time.Although this non-integral way of taxation system reform has achieved certain results,it cannot fundamentally rationalize the contradiction between production relations(taxation system)and productivity(enterprise upgrading),and sometimes even making the taxation problems more and more complicated.As the most important production relation,the taxation system should be adapted to the continuous development of productivity,but the current taxation system has formed three major contradictions with economic development:the contradiction between the imbalance of economic structure,which is brought by the imbalance between “efficiency” and “fairness” of taxation,and the original purpose of the taxation system to promote economic development and upgrading;the contradiction between the original intention of frequent adjustment of taxation policies to promote development and the need for a stable institutional environment for enterprise upgrading;the contradiction between the increasingly strong conduction effect of the taxation system caused by the increasingly close connection between the segmented markets and the ignorance of the conduction effect of the consequences brought by the current taxation system construction.These three contradictions are the core keys of the taxation system reform.Fiscal science attempts to find the equilibrium point between “fairness” and“efficiency” from the perspective of the reform in the collection and management of taxes.Neo-institutional economics attempts to find solutions to reduce the adverse effects of the instability of the taxation system from the perspective of complementing the formal system with informal systems.Economics tries to explore the feasible path to reduce the allocation distortion of factors in the free market caused by taxation from the perspective of resource allocation.Legal scholars try to find a feasible development path of taxation equity from the perspective of “legislation” and “law enforcement”.Based on these,this paper sorts out the historical development,the reform measures and the implementation effects of China’s taxation system,the macro background and the significance of enterprise upgrading,and the taxation system supporting the development stage.It also summarizes,compares and analyzes the mainstream literature on taxation system reform,taxation functioning mechanism,and enterprise upgrading,defines the fundamental concepts,and discovers the conflicting points,theoretical imperfections and insufficient support for practice in the current literature.On this basis,this paper systematically summarizes three main lines of research on taxation system reform-the inequity perspective of taxation system reform in the regional horizontal dimension,the policy stability perspective of taxation system reform in the time vertical dimension,and the supply chain conduction perspective of taxation system in the supply chain conduction dimension.With emphasis on both theoretical analysis and empirical research,the study is conducted in accordance with the logical chain of “problem formulation-theoretical analysis-empirical analysis-research conclusion”,and identifies the paths through which the taxation system reform affects enterprise upgrading.The study mainly focuses on the following three aspects.First,the paper studies taxation inequity and enterprise upgrading in the horizontal dimension.The higher the degree of taxation inequity enterprises face,the more significant lowering of taxation inequity can be brought by information symmetrization,so the product of whether enterprises suffered from taxation inequity before the reform of the taxation institution can be used to indicate the reduction of taxation inequity in enterprises.Using listed companies between 2000 and 2019 as the sample and the Golden Tax III reform and the shift of social security fee collection from the human resources department to the tax department as quasi-natural experiments,this paper constructs a double difference-in-difference-in-differences(DDD)model by dividing the sample into experimental and control groups based on the degree of taxation inequity enterprises suffer before the reform to examine the impact of the reduction in the degree of taxation inequity on enterprise upgrading.It is found that the reduction in taxation inequity brought by the reform in tax and fee collection has a significant contribution to enterprise upgrading.Further,relative to enterprises that did not suffer from taxation inequity,enterprises that suffered from taxation inequity increased their upgrading efficiency by about 13% more after the reform of tax and fee collection system(such as the Golden Tax III)that reduces information asymmetry in collection.Relative to enterprises that did not suffer from taxation inequity,enterprises that suffered from taxation inequity increased their upgrading efficiency by about 18.7%more after the reform of tax and fee collection agencies(such as the shift of social security fee collection from the human resources department to the tax department)that reduce enterprise information asymmetry.The reduction of taxation inequity promotes enterprise upgrading mainly through reducing resource mismatch in factor markets,reducing financing constraints,increasing human inputs,accelerating enterprise operation efficiency,and reducing virtual financial assets holdings.Enterprises with strong profitability,relatively young enterprises,relatively large enterprises,enterprises in high-quality market environment,and enterprises in segmented market environment are relatively more efficient in upgrading after the reduction of taxation inequity.Enterprises in areas with relatively weak fiscal transparency enjoy more obvious reduction in taxation inequity reduction from the tax and fee collection reform.Second,the paper studies taxation uncertainty and enterprise upgrading in the vertical dimension.The higher the degree of upgrading,the more complex the production relationship that the enterprise itself has,and frequent policy adjustments will be superimposed and amplified by the complexity of the production relationship,and enterprises with a high degree of upgrading will face greater risk of taxation system uncertainty;in other words,taxation uncertainty is not conducive to enterprise upgrading.Using listed companies from 2000 to 2019 as the sample,this paper constructs an empirical database by matching financial data of listed companies,customs data,as well as marketability index and fiscal transparency index to empirically tests the impact of taxation uncertainty on enterprise upgrading.The empirical study finds that taxation uncertainty has a significant negative impact on enterprise upgrading,and the impact from income tax uncertainty is greater than that from overall tax and fee uncertainty.More specifically,when the standard deviation of income taxes in the past three years is used as the volatility indicator,each unit increase in the standard deviation will cause a 5.3 units decrease in the efficiency of enterprise upgrading;when the standard deviation of overall tax and fee in the past three years is used as the uncertainty indicator,each unit increase in the standard deviation will cause a 1.5 units decrease in the efficiency of enterprise upgrading.Increased financing constraints,reduced human resource inputs,crowded out management inputs,increased share of financial assets,and aggravated resource mismatch in factor markets are the mediating paths through which taxation uncertainty inhibits enterprise upgrading.A good overall market-oriented environment,government-market relationship,development of non-state enterprises,product market development,factor market development,intermediary organizations and legal system play the role of“stabilizer” and reduce the negative impact of taxation uncertainty.Under the general trend of segmented market consolidation,the negative impact of taxation uncertainty will also follow the spread,in which case it is urgent to reduce the negative impact of taxation uncertainty.Finally,the paper studies the conduction effect of taxation transmission in the supply chain and enterprise upgrading.The change of various taxes and fees of upstream enterprises in the supply chain will increase their incentive to pass on the tax by changing the price of supplied goods;at the same time,the increase of tax will directly increase the business risk of upstream enterprises,and this risk will also affect the stability of the supply chain,which will have an impact on downstream enterprises.In other words,the taxes of upstream enterprises will be transmitted to downstream enterprises through the supply chain,thus inhibiting the upgrading of downstream enterprises.This paper constructs a theoretical model that upstream enterprises’ taxes affect the upgrading of downstream enterprises through supply chain transmission,and matches the tax data of upstream listed suppliers,procurement share data and downstream enterprises data to build an empirical database.The empirical study finds that the increase in the taxes of upstream enterprises in the supply chain has a significant inhibitory effect on the upgrading of downstream enterprises.Without the consideration of procurement share,each unit increase in income tax rate of upstream enterprises causes a 6.6% loss in the upgrading efficiency of downstream enterprises,each unit increase in VAT rate of upstream enterprises causes a 2.5% loss in the upgrading efficiency of downstream enterprises,and each unit increase in overall tax and fee burden of upstream enterprises causes a 1.3% loss in the upgrading efficiency of downstream enterprises.The increased burden of operating costs,increased financing constraints,slower capital turnover,inhibited invention and creation,and increased factor mismatch of downstream enterprises are the mechanisms through which the taxes of upstream enterprises adversely affect the upgrading of downstream enterprises.The higher the total marketization process score,government-market relationship score,non-state economic development score,factor market development score,market intermediary development score and legal system environment score,the smaller the inhibitory effect of upstream enterprises’ taxes on the upgrading of downstream enterprises;the higher the degree of market segmentation,the stronger the inhibitory effect of upstream enterprises’ taxes on the upgrading of downstream enterprises;the higher the fiscal transparency index,the weaker the inhibitory effect of upstream enterprises’ taxes on downstream enterprises’ upgrading.Compared with previous literature,this paper contributes and innovates in the following aspects.First,it tries to study the taxation system from an integral perspective beyond the partial perspective.The current research on taxation issues in the practical and academic fields can be described as “voluminous”,but most articles study taxation issues from a certain policy or a certain perspective;the practical field is making policy fixes under the framework of the existing taxation system,but seldom considers the problems of the tax system from a holistic perspective.The fragmented reform may increase the complexity of the problem to a certain extent.This paper goes beyond the divisional perspective of a certain policy or a certain provision and studies the impact of taxation issues on enterprise upgrading from the overall perspective of taxation system reform.Second,it opens up a supply chain conduction perspective of the research on taxation impact.This paper goes beyond the isolated research perspective of the impact of taxes and fees on regulated enterprises and studies the impact of upstream enterprises’ taxes and fees on downstream enterprises’ upgrading from the perspective of supply chain conduction to estimate the system externalities more accurately,which expands the research literature on the consequences of the taxation system.Third,it expands the theory of taxation uncertainty.Most domestic studies on taxation uncertainty focus on the macro level,and few studies explore from the perspective of enterprise upgrading.This paper selects a more objective measure of taxation uncertainty from the micro level and observes the impact of taxation uncertainty on enterprise upgrading from the perspective of micro-enterprises.Fourth,this paper tries to test the arguments by using two DDD models to verify each other.In the empirical research part,this paper tries to use two policy shocks for DDD testing,and the two DDD models validate each other with their own focus,which not only verifies the robustness of the findings,but also reports the different effects of tax and fee collection system reform and tax and fee collection agency reform on enterprise upgrading from different perspectives,and reports the similarities and differences in the effects of tax-focused inequity reduction and fee-focused inequity reduction on enterprise upgrading.Fifth,to a certain extent,this paper complements the literature on the connotation of enterprise upgrading.There is a problem of ambiguous definition regarding the concept and definition of enterprise upgrading in academia,and the research on enterprise upgrading is fragmented into dimensions such as innovation,capital intensity and global value chain index.This paper reviews the existing theoretical literature,summarizes the commonalities of different studies,and constructs an extended enterprise upgrading index system based on the essence of enterprise upgrading: “all improvements that are conducive to enterprise efficiency and valueadded increase”,which enriches the research literature on enterprise upgrading and provides a theoretical reference for the construction of micro-foundations for highquality economic development.Based on the above findings,this paper puts forward several policy recommendations.First,the top-level design of the taxation system reform should be strengthened to avoid the negative impact of enterprise upgrading caused by excessive policy adjustments.Policy adjustments are inevitable during the transition and development period of “crossing the river by touching the stones”,so it is important to strengthen the top-level design of the taxation system to reduce the loss of efficiency of enterprise upgrading caused by frequent adjustments of the taxation system.Second,the reform of the taxation system should focus on the balance of“efficiency” and “fairness” to avoid market imbalance caused by excessive pursuit of“efficiency” which may reduce the efficiency of enterprise upgrading.Third,the design of the taxation system should be switched from an isolated perspective to a systematic perspective.Under the current situation of increasing market interaction,the conduction effect of the taxation system through the supply chain is getting stronger and stronger,accordingly,the design of the taxation system should also incorporate the externality of its impact into the consequence assessment framework,and switch from isolated perspectives to a systematic perspective.Fourth,the information asymmetry in the enforcement of the taxation system should be reduced.The information asymmetry in the implementation of the taxation system provides space for rent-seeking by the executive staff and tax avoidance by enterprises,which makes the enforcement of the taxation system seriously distorted and its efficiency greatly compromised.Promoting the construction of e-government and enhancing fiscal transparency are of important value to ensure the practical enforcement of the taxation system.Fifth,the construction of the informal systems such as the business environment should be strengthened.In the case that the formal system such as the taxation system is not yet perfect,it is important to strengthen the informal systems such as the business environment to make up for the shortage of the formal system in the promotion of enterprise upgrading through the informal system. |
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