环境规制与企业避税行为——基于新《环境保护法》实施的经验证据

Environmental Regulation and Corporate Tax Avoidance:Empirical Evidences Based on the Implementation of the New Environmental Protection Law

充分发挥环境规制多维监管效力,兼顾经济高质量发展与收入分配机制合理高效,是实现共同富裕的有力支撑。为此,在高质量发展导向生态环境优先的背景下,从税收治理这一全新视角挖掘环境规制的附加效应。基于2015年实施新《环境保护法》的准自然实验研究背景,构造双重差分模型,检验了政治成本假说视角下环境规制对企业避税行为的影响。研究表明:环境规制显著抑制了企业的避税行为。机制分析结果表明:环境规制立法增加了对企业的外部监督,这种外部监督产生的附加效应提高了企业避税行为的政治成本,从而遏制了企业过于激进的避税决策。经济后果分析表明:环境规制虽然增加了企业税负,但是同时也引起了企业信息环境改善和声誉增加,有助于企业价值的提升。因此,推进环境规制体系建设,不仅要关注环境规制促进生态环境改善的直接效应,而且应积极发挥环境规制的税收治理功能等附加效应,从而充分释放政策红利,实现环境保护与经济效率的共赢。

Giving full play to the multi-dimensional supervision effect of the environmental regulation while paying attention to the high-quality economic development and a reasonable and efficient income distribution mechanism are powerful supports to achieve common prosperity.Therefore,in the context of high-quality-developmentorientation and ecological environment priority,this paper analyzes the additive effect of the environmental regulation from the new perspective of tax governance.Based on the quasi-natural experiment research under the background of the implementation of the new Environmental Protection Law in 2015,this paper constructs a double difference model to test the impact of environmental regulation on corporate tax avoidance from the perspective of the political cost hypothesis.The findings show that environmental regulation can significantly inhibit corporate tax avoidance.The results of the mechanism analysis show that environmental regulation legislation has increased the external supervision of enterprises,and the additional effect of this external supervision will increase the political cost of corporate tax avoidance behaviors,thereby curbing the radical tax avoidance decisions made by enterprises.The analysis of the economic consequences reveals that although environmental regulation has increased the tax burden of enterprises,it also leads to the improvement of the corporate information environment and their reputation,which helps to enhance the value of enterprises.Therefore,to promote the construction of the environmental regulation system,we must not only pay attention to the direct effect of environmental regulation on the improvement of the ecological environment,but also actively give play to the tax governance function and other additional effects of environmental regulations,so as to fully release the policy dividends and realize the mutual benefits of environmental protection and economic efficiency.