我国减税政策会影响地方财政支出效率吗

Will China’s Tax Reduction Policy Affect the Efficiency of Local Fiscal Expenditures?

减税政策会造成地方财政收支不平衡的发展困境,而财税政策如何提质增效,对于保障我国减税降费的政策空间和地方财政可持续性具有重要意义。借助“营改增”试点改革捕捉减税政策的外生变化,运用双重差分模型识别我国减税政策对地方财政支出效率的影响及其作用机理。研究发现:“营改增”政策实施显著提升了地方财政支出效率;为了应对减税政策引致的财政压力,地方政府通过加强审计监督力度、优化公共支出结构的途径提高财政支出效率;在财政自主权、政府间竞争、财政透明度、市场化程度越大的情况下,减税政策的财政支出效率提升效应越明显。因此,建议从四个方面实现财税政策的提质增效目标:深化财税体制改革,在减税降费的过程中提高财政支出效率;完善财政收支激励机制,纠正地方政府“重生产、轻服务”的财政支出结构偏向;科学配置各级政府的财权和事权,调动中央宏观调控能力和地方财政自主能力的积极性;深化政府预算制度和财政公开制度改革。

The tax reduction policy will lead local governments to development dilemma of imbalanced fiscal revenue and expenditure. Improving the quality and efficiency of fiscal and taxation policies is of great significance in guaranteeing the policy space of China’s tax and fee reduction and maintaining the local fiscal sustainability. With the help of the pilot reform of “ replacing business tax with VAT”to capture the exogenous changes of the tax reduction policy, this paper tries to identify the impact of China’s tax reduction policy on the efficiency of local fiscal expenditure and its mechanism by making use of the difference-in-difference model. The findings show that the implementation of the“VAT reform”policy has significantly improved the efficiency of local fiscal expenditures. In order to cope with the fiscal pressure caused by the tax reduction policies, local governments have improved the efficiency of fiscal expenditures by strengthening audit and supervision and optimizing the structure of public expenditures. The greater the degree of fiscal autonomy, intergovernmental competition, fiscal transparency, and marketization, the more obvious the effect of tax reduction policies in improving fiscal expenditure efficiency will be. Therefore, it is suggested that the government should achieve the goal of improving the quality and efficiency of the fiscal and taxation policies from the following four aspects: deepening the reform of the fiscal and taxation system, and improving the fiscal expenditure efficiency during the process of tax and fee reduction;improving the fiscal revenue and expenditure incentive mechanism, and correcting the structural deviation of fiscal expenditure of local governments in“paying more attention on production than service”;allocating the financial power and the authority of office scientifically, and mobilizing the enthusiasm of the central macroeconomic regulating ability and the local financial autonomous ability;deepening the reform of government budget system and financial affairs public system.