财政转移支付的不确定性与企业实际税负

The Uncertainty of Transfer Payments and Corporate Actual Tax Burden

中国现阶段转移支付制度失范是转移支付波动的主要诱因之一,而转移支付波动会增加地方政府财政收入风险。从理论上讲,当地方政府财政收入风险加大时,为保持财政可持续性,地方政府往往倾向于通过提高征税努力程度增加"预防性自有财力",从而影响企业税收负担。本文首先通过构建理论模型论证转移支付波动如何影响地方政府征税努力程度;然后基于1998—2009年全国县级财政经济统计数据以及中国工业企业微观数据,实证检验了县级转移支付波动对企业税收负担的影响。研究结果表明:县级转移支付波动对辖区内企业实际税率有显著正向影响,采用工具变量方法估计也支持这一结论。进一步的异质性分析发现,一般性转移支付波动对企业实际税率有显著正向影响,专项转移支付波动对企业实际税率无显著影响。对企业按性质分组之后的估计结果表明,相对于其他企业,当转移支付波动增加时,国有企业、地方税务局征管企业以及有行政隶属关系企业的实际税率上升更多。本文的研究从政府间财政关系角度解释了转移支付波动如何影响企业税收负担,能够为新一轮财税体制改革以及现阶段企业"减税降负"政策设计提供新视角。

China’s current transfer payment system anomie is one of the main incentives for transfer payment volatility,and transfer payment volatility will increase local government fiscal revenue risk.In theory,when the local governments’fiscal revenue risk increases,in order to maintain fiscal sustainability,local governments tend to increase the“preventive self-financing”by increasing the level of taxation efforts,thus affecting the tax burden of enterprises.This paper firstly constructs a theoretical model to demonstrate how transfer payment volatility affects the degree of local government taxation efforts,and based on the national county-level fiscal and economic statistics from 1998 to 2009 and the micro-data of Chinese industrial enterprises,this paper empirically examines the impact of county-level transfer payment volatility on corporate tax burden.The results show that the county-level transfer payment volatility has a significant positive impact on the actual tax rate of enterprises within the jurisdiction,and the instrument variable method estimation also supports this conclusion.Further heterogeneity analysis found that the general transfer payment volatility had a significant positive impact on the actual tax rate of the enterprises,and the fluctuation of the special transfer payment had no significant effect on the actual tax rate of the enterprises.After grouping by nature,it is found that,compared with other enterprises,when the fluctuation of transfer payments increases,the actual tax rate of state-owned enterprises,enterprises under the control of the State Administration of Taxation,and enterprises with administrative affiliation increases more.The research in this paper explains how the transfer payment volatility affects the tax burden of enterprises from the perspective of intergovernmental fiscal relations,and can provide a new perspective for the new round of fiscal and taxation system reform and the current policy of“tax reduction and burden reduction”.