Research On The Impact Of Fiscal Transparency On Corporate Tax Compliance

Nowadays,we have seen the deepening reform of China’s market economy system and the continuous promotion of socialist legal system construction.Building a transparent,clean and efficient service-oriented government and improving fiscal transparency have become one of the core elements in the governance of modern government.As the main body of the micro economy,the economic behaviors of enterprises are affected by the regional macroeconomic and social factors.In the last few years,the improvement of regional fiscal transparency and taxation environment in China have inevitably been bound to affect the tax compliance behavior of enterprises.The existing studies have mainly analyzed the incentive effect of fiscal transparency on tax compliance at the theoretical level,but the detailed mechanism of action and empirical analysis supported by data are rarely covered.As a consequence,this thesis mainly focuses on the effects and mechanisms of fiscal transparency on corporate tax compliance.Firstly,after sorting out the relevant theories and completing the literature review,based on the "slope model",this thesis theoretically analyzes the direct and indirect effects of fiscal transparency on corporate tax compliance.The thesis proposes that,on the one hand,fiscal transparency weakens the incentive of corporate tax non-compliance by improving the stability of corporate expectations and reduces the cost of corporate tax compliance by curbing tax corruption on the other.The two parallel intermediaries work together on the corporate tax compliance,and the corresponding research hypotheses are put forward accordingly.Secondly,this thesis selected the sample of Chinese listed companies from 2014 to 2020,and the typical facts of corporate tax compliance and regional fiscal transparency are descriptive based on data form tax credit ratings and the Research Report on Fiscal Transparency of Municipal Governments in China published by a research group from Tsinghua University.The analysis results show that corporate tax compliance and regional fiscal transparency have gradually improved in the last few years,and fiscal transparency exerts a positive incentive effect on corporate tax compliance behavior.At the same time,there are differences in fiscal transparency among different regional subsamples and differences in corporate tax compliance among different ownership,regional and industry subsamples.Thirdly,the regression analysis by panel logit model and instrumental variables method empirically proves that there is a significant positive effect of fiscal transparency on corporate tax compliance.Moreover,the improvement of fiscal transparency helps to reduce corporate tax non-compliance behavior.At the same time,the incentive effect of fiscal transparency improvement is significantly heterogeneous among enterprises of different ownership,regions and industries.For private enterprises,the improvement of fiscal transparency on tax compliance is most significant.Compared with western and northeastern regions,the tax compliance behavior of enterprises located in eastern and central regions is positively affected by the improvement of fiscal transparency.The tax compliance behavior of labor-intensive enterprises is mostly influenced by changes in fiscal transparency.Based on the baseline regression and heterogeneity analysis,the mediating effects of corporate expectations and tax corruption between fiscal transparency and corporate tax compliance are verified using ZMediation statistical test method,KHB test method and GSEM model to test the parallel mediating effects.Finally,based on the summary of the whole thesis,specific policy recommendations are proposed to further enhance corporate tax compliance by strengthening fiscal informatization and promoting openness and transparency of fiscal information.