税收政策设计与企业创新激励:增值税留抵退税对企业研发投入的影响

Tax Design and Corporate Innovation:The Effect of Value-added Tax Credit Refund Policy on Corporate R&D Investment

合宜的税收政策可对企业创新产生不同程度的积极影响,是基于大量相关研究得到的重要启示。为助企纾困,中国政府在2011年初次局部实施增值税留抵退税政策,其后多次扩大这一政策的实施范围。本文聚焦2019年8月出台的四类先进制造业企业留抵退税政策,基于上市公司季度数据,采用双重差分模型进行回归分析,发现留抵退税对企业研发投入产生了积极的政策效应。同时,本文对大型企业和中小微企业、私营企业和国有企业、经营结构多元化程度不同以及股权集中度不同的企业进行了四组异质性检验,以考察不同企业对同一特定政策的敏感度差异。研究发现,留抵退税政策对大型企业、国有企业、经营结构更加多元以及股权相对分散的企业有着更强的正向影响。关注不同类型企业的政策敏感度差异对于改进相关政策设计,增强政策效能,促进国家经济持续健康发展具有重要意义。

The Chinese central government introduced the “value-added tax(VAT) credit refund” policy in 2011,aiming to alleviate the firms’ financial pressure and help them survive and thrive through innovation under tough challenges.Eligibility for the refund was first limited to a small group of firms and has gradually expanded over the years.This paper focused on the VAT credit refund policy introduced in August 2019 that targeted four categories of advanced manufacturing industries,and investigated the direction and magnitude of its effect on corporate innovation.Adopting the framework of the Difference-in-Differences model,it analyzed quarterly data of firms listed on the A-share market.It is found that the policy has a positive influence on corporate R&D investment in general.To investigate the sensitivity of different kinds of firms to the policy,this paper conducted four sets of heterogeneity analyses on large versus micro,small and medium-sized enterprises,private versus state-owned enterprises,and enterprises of different degrees of diversification and ownership concentration.The results show that the positive effect of VAT credit refund policy is stronger on large and state-owned firms with a higher degree of diversification and a lower degree of ownership concentration.