资本市场开放与公司税收遵从——来自“陆港通”交易制度实施的经验证据

Capital Market Opening-up and Corporate Tax Compliance:Evidence from Mainland-Hong Kong Stock Connect

资本市场开放产生了持续而广泛的影响,本文尝试从公司税收遵从角度理解这一政策的潜在影响。利用中国“陆港通”交易制度实施这一准自然实验,采用倾向得分匹配-双重差分法(PSM-DID)考察了资本市场开放对公司税收遵从的影响。研究发现:资本市场开放会显著降低“陆港通”标的企业的账税差异避税水平,这一结论在系列稳健性检验中依然成立;机制分析表明,资本市场开放可以通过缓解标的企业融资约束以及通过提高标的企业的信息透明度,抑制企业账税差异避税;异质性分析表明,该效应主要存在于位于税收征管水平较低地区的企业和国有企业;拓展性分析结果表明,资本市场开放对企业账税差异避税的影响随着企业税收遵从水平的降低先增后减。此外,在资本市场压力下,企业会选择更为隐蔽的账税一致避税策略,但没有证据表明资本市场开放影响了企业的总体税收状况。本文的研究从企业融资约束和信息透明两个角度揭示了资本市场开放影响公司税收遵从行为的微观机制,为进一步推进资本市场开放和提高国家征税能力提供了经验证据。

Against the background of rising trade protectionism and anti-globalization,China has continuously increased its degree of openness and promoted global openness,becoming the main leader of economic opening and globalization.Opening up has a profound impact on the economy and society.In-depth and detailed research on the impact of opening up on the economy and society from multiple angles is of great value for comprehensive understanding and effective promotion of opening up.In fact,opening to the outside world is the basic external environment in which an enterprise is located,which influences and shapes the business decision-making and behavior of an enterprise.In recent years,China’s opening to the outside world has been deepening,and the opening of the capital market has been gradually promoted.Capital market opening,which is the main content of opening up to the outside world,is also an important factor in determining corporate tax compliance.In order to solve the potential endogenousproblems,this article uses the Mainland-Hong Kong stock connect trading system to implement the quasi-natural experiment provided by this exogenous policy shock to identify causality.The Mainland-Hong Kong stock connect trading system is one of the important strategies for the continuous opening up of China’s capital market.Its system design to determine the list of targets for the Mainland-Hong Kong stock connect in batches provides a quasi-natural experiment for this article.Based on this,this paper uses the data of China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2018 to construct a propensity score matching-double difference model(PSM-DID)to examine the impact of capital market opening on corporate tax compliance and its internal mechanism.The empirical results show that after the Mainland-Hong Kong stock connect trading system is implemented,the non-conforming tax avoidance of target companies has decreased significantly compared with non-target companies.Further research found that the opening of the capital market will affect corporate tax compliance behavior through two mechanisms:On the one hand,the opening of the capital market can alleviate corporate financing constraints,thereby reducing their inherent motivation for tax evasion.On the other hand,tax audits are often carried out through financial statements.The opening of the capital market promotes companies to improve the quality of their information disclosure,thereby increasing the probability of tax avoidance being discovered.The analysis of heterogeneity shows that the impact of capital market opening on corporate tax compliance is more significant for State-owned enterprises and enterprises located in areas with a lower level of tax collection.The results of extended analysis show that the impact of capital market opening on corporate tax avoidance increases first and then decreases with the decrease of corporate tax compliance level.In addition,under the pressure of the capital market,companies will choose the conforming tax avoidance strategy,but there is no evidence that the opening of the capital market has affected the overall tax situation of the company.The possible contributions of this article are mainly in the following aspects:First,in recent years,more and more scholars have begun to pay attention to the impact of non-collection and management factors on corporate tax compliance.This article has enriched the literature on corporate tax compliance factors from the perspective of capital market opening.Second,this article expands the literature on the economic consequences of capital market opening.This article provides empirical evidence that capital market opening can help companies improve tax compliance,and provides empirical support for the country to further promote capital market opening.Third,this article uses the Mainland-Hong Kong stock connect as an exogenous policy impact,which can avoid the interference of endogenous problems caused by missing variables on the estimation results,and better identify the causality between capital market opening and corporate tax compliance.This paper reveals the micro mechanism of the capital market opening-up affecting the tax compliance behavior of enterprises,expands the research on the economic consequences of the capital market opening-up,and provides empirical evidence for further promoting the capital market openness and improving the national tax collection capacity.