税收政策与企业行为:基于准自然实验的研究评述

Tax Policies and Corporate Behaviors:A Review Based on Quasi-natural Experiment Literature

税收政策是政府调控市场、激励企业投资和创新的重要手段,对企业行为产生了重要影响,因此税收政策与企业行为的研究受到广泛关注,是历久弥新的热点话题。近年来,由于在因果推断方面的优势,采用准自然实验方法研究税收政策对企业行为影响的文献日益增加。本文从国内外经济、财税、金融、会计领域的重要期刊中筛选代表性文献,对涉及的重要税收政策和企业行为进行归类,搭建理论框架,全面梳理并总结现有研究内容和主要结论。基于准自然实验,已有研究主要涉及了企业税收政策、税收征管政策和企业利益相关者税收政策对企业财务决策、信息披露、纳税行为、企业行为综合表现等方面的影响,特别是在税收政策对企业固定资产投资、研发投入、创新和企业纳税行为等领域,取得了丰富的研究成果,为未来研究奠定了良好基础,也为政策制定者和企业管理者提供了重要启示。基于国内外研究现状,本文指出了现有研究存在的不足并提出了后续研究展望,以期推动税收政策与企业行为领域研究的高质量发展,为政府和企业决策提供进一步指导。

Tax policy is an important means for government to regulate market and encourages enterprises to invest and innovate which also has an important impact on the corporate behaviors. Recently, the number of articles using quasi-natural experiment method is increasing due to its advantages in casual inference. Generally, there are two main challenges when using traditional approaches to assessing the economic consequences of tax policies. First, changes in tax policy are unlikely to be random and instead may themselves be influenced by prevailing economic conditions and other factors. Second, researchers can’t observe counterfactual outcomes. The empirical strategy designed by quasi-natural experiment can address these challenges effectively. This study aims to review these literature, summarize the impact of tax policies on corporate behaviors and give suggestions for policy-makers and future studies.This study firstly selects articles from important domestic and foreign journals in the past ten years which employing quasi-natural experimental method to study the impact of tax policies on corporate behaviors, including 91 articles in English and 131 in Chinese. All this articles were read carefully to identify and categorize tax policies and the corporate behaviors. The tax policies are classified into three categories which are corporate tax policies, tax collection and administration policies and corporate stakeholder tax policies. The corporate behaviors are categorized into five groups which are financial decision-making, information disclosure, taxation behavior, comprehensive performance and other corporate behaviors.Next, this study reviews the impact of tax policies on the each of corporate behaviors mention above.Based on experimental evidences, this study summarize the influence mechanism for each tax policy category to corporate behaviors. In terms of corporate tax policies, it usually aims at reducing tax rates, providing tax incentives and encouraging corporate investment, most experimental results show that it provides extra cash flow and promotes investment in fixed assets and R&D. In terms of tax collection and administration policies, implementation of these policies will directly effect the intensity of tax enforcement. When the intensity of tax enforcement increases, corporate will be less aggressive in tax planning, face stronger financing constraints and reduce information asymmetry. In the contrary, when it decreases, corporate will be more aggressive in tax planning, decrease R&D investment and cause agency problems which usually leads to a decline in corporate performance and the total factor productivity. Last, in terms of corporate stakeholder tax policies, many articles provide evidences show that the tax policies for corporate stakeholders will indirectly effect corporate behaviors. For instance, experimental evidences indicate that tax policies for corporate managers, controlling shareholders, institutional and individual investors could affect corporate behaviors.Finally, this study makes comments about the articles and gives suggestions for future research. There are three points that researchers need pay attention to:(1)There may exist problems that misuse of quasi-natural experiments and insufficient robustness checks.(2)Different countries may have different system of organization and culture. It will not only effect the formulation of tax policy but also the implement. However many articles tend to ignore it.(3)Due to the confidentiality of some tax data, the database of tax policies and corporations needs to be improved. This study also gives suggestions for future research.(1)Improve existing empirical methods and explore effective and innovative research methods, try to use improved method and new effective methods like bunching method and structural estimation to overcome the limitations of existing research methods.(2)Apply interdisciplinary theories and methods, try to expand the depth and breadth of tax policy research.(3)Based on the special national conditions and culture, test the implementation effect of existing tax policies, and try to explore optimization plans.