税收逐顶竞争与税负粘性——基于多元绩效考核的视角

Tax Competition and Tax Stickiness:From the Perspective of Multiple Performance Appraisal

传统的税收竞争理论聚焦经济资源的争夺,将税收竞争界定为单一的逐底竞争行为,而忽视了中国情境下逐顶竞争的可能性。文章通过构建数理模型论证了在多元绩效考核的视角下,完全对称的纯策略纳什均衡博弈将促使地方政府税收征管同时存在逐底竞争和逐顶竞争两种动机,尤其是逐顶竞争会造成税负易升难降的税负粘性现象,从而影响减税降费政策的实效性。基于269个城市2005—2018年面板数据构建非对称反应模型,并进行了税收竞争效应的空间计量分析,回归结果验证了逐顶竞争和逐底竞争并存,且以逐顶竞争效应为主。进一步嵌套上市公司数据的回归分析显示,一省之内经济发展水平相近城市的税收逐顶竞争会显著推高税负粘性,特别是在非国有企业和制造业企业中尤为突出。可见,税收竞争是造成税负粘性现象的重要原因,这为未来加强税收征管、优化绩效考核指明了改进方向。

Although the legislative power of tax collection in China belongs to the central government,the tax system feature of “a larger framework with fewer applications” has reserved a large space for local tax collection and management.The actual tax rate can be manipulated by the local government,so as to carry out horizontal tax competition.Traditional tax competition theory focuses on the competition for economic resources,and defines tax competition as a single race-to-the-bottom behavior.This paper constructs a mathematical model to demonstrate that under the perspective of multiple performance appraisal,a completely symmetric pure strategy Nash equilibrium game will promote the local government tax collection and management to have both race-to-the-bottom and race-to-the-top motivations.Especially,the race-to-the-top motivation will cause tax stickiness,which makes tax burden easy to rise but difficult to reduce,and thus affects the effectiveness of tax reduction.To verify the above inference,the traditional spatial weight matrix is further improved,and an asymmetric response model is constructed to decompose the spatial effect of tax competition.Based on the panel data of 269 cities from 2005to 2018,the estimation result shows that tax competition has both the race-to-the-bottom effect and the race-to-the-top effect,and the latter effect dominates.Furthermore,the tax stickiness of listed companies is calculated with the modified individual coefficient test method,and it is found that the incidence of tax stickiness is about 20%,and some companies also exhibit anti-stickiness.Regression analysis shows that tax competition racing to the top will push up tax stickiness.This phenomenon is most evident among cities with similar economic levels within a province,but not among cities with close geographical distances,confirming that the promotion championship mechanism serves as an important driving force for tax competition.Heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of tax competition on tax stickiness is particularly prominent among non-stateowned enterprises and manufacturing enterprises,highlighting the urgent need to alleviate tax competition tendencies and increase tax-reduction efforts.This paper expands the scope of tax competition research from the perspective of multiple performance appraisal,reveals that tax competition is an important reason for the stickiness of tax burden,and points out the direction for improvement in strengthening tax collection and management and optimizing performance appraisal in the future.