Research On The Impact Of Tax Competition On Environmental Pollution

At present,China implements the fiscal decentralization system of tax distribution system.The high unification of fiscal decentralization and political centralization is an obvious feature of this system,which plays an important role in the process of China’s economic development.However,this system is also the main reason for the emergence of tax competition among governments.With the continuous release of the positive effects of economic development brought by inter-governmental tax competition,the negative effects also follow,and environmental pollution is one of them.Under the current gdp-oriented political promotion system of local officials in China,will the local government loosen the environmental control in order to develop the economy? If the tax competition between local governments will cause environmental pollution,how will it affect and to what extent? Based on this,further research is carried out in this paper.On the basis of previous studies,this paper establishes a systematic GMM model of the impact of tax competition on environmental pollution by combining with the Kuznets curve of the environment.It is found that(1)with the strengthening of horizontal tax competition between local governments,the environmental pollution of sulfur dioxide and industrial wastewater will be aggravated.And the former is worse for the environment than the latter.On the contrary,the horizontal tax competition between local governments has an inverse relationship with the discharge of solid waste.It verifies that local governments adopt different treatment methods for different environmental pollution,which is called "riding the seesaw" strategy.(2)The value-added tax,enterprise income tax,urban maintenance and construction tax and urban land use tax collected by local governments all aggravate the pollution degree of sulfur dioxide and industrial wastewater,and alleviate the pollution degree of solid waste.(3)Resource tax aggravates the environmental pollution of sulfur dioxide and solid wastes,and reduces the environmental pollution of industrial wastewater.(4)Vertical inter-governmental tax competition in China has reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide and industrial wastewater and increased emissions of industrial solid waste.(5)There are regional differences in the impact of tax competition on environmental pollution.In terms of sulfur dioxide emissions and industrial wastewater emissions,the intensification of tax competition makes sulfur dioxide pollution and industrial wastewater pollution in the western region worse.For solid waste emissions,tax competition is more conducive to reducing the environmental pollution of solid waste in the western region.(6)The higher the level of economic development,the greater the degree of opening to the outside world,the higher the level of urbanization,the greater the proportion of coal resource consumption,and the greater the contribution of the second output value of each region,the greater the pollution degree of industrial waste.Based on the above conclusions,this paper proposes to improve the green performance assessment system,standardize the unreasonable tax competition between regions,improve the vertical and horizontal division of governmental financial and administrative rights,improve the transfer payment system for environmental protection,improve the relevant setting of environmental protection taxes,and promote the green development of industrial structure.