央地退税分担与企业采购的区位选择

Sharing of Central and Local Export Tax Rebates and the Location Selection of Enterprise Procurement

税收统一有助于缓解地方政府间的利益博弈,推进国内大循环体系的构建。本文利用退税央地间分担机制改革的拟自然实验,基于企业跨区域采购行为的视角,研究中国税收负担在央地间重新分配的外生冲击政策如何影响上下游企业间的区域合作关系和国内统一大市场的形成。通过构建上下游企业间采购行为的理论模型进行分析,并采用2009—2018年上市A股公司数据进行实证检验,结果发现:退税负担从地方转移至中央时,出口企业的省外采购比上升约2至5个百分点,其中,改革前财政压力较大地区的出口企业省外采购比上升约3至4个百分点,且非国有企业、数字技术运用程度高的企业以及融资约束大的企业省外采购比提高更多,表明税收统一减少了央地政府由于目标不一致给微观企业造成的不利影响,有利于下游企业寻找更为优质的上游供应商,推动更加畅通高效的企业合作,从而促进国内大循环。本文的结论为当前中国政府构建以国内大循环为主体的新发展格局提供具有现实意义的税收政策建议,也为进一步研究如何构建中国内循环体系问题提供新的视角和微观证据。

President Xi Jinping highlighted that“we should make steady progress in creating a new development pattern where domestic and foreign markets can boost each other,with domestic market as the mainstay”.It is the primary issue for China to clear the way for the unimpeded regional flow of productive factors,so that we can optimize the layout of domestic industrial chains,leverage the strengths of an enormous market,and create a new pattern of development.China's tax-sharing system reform encourages local governments to extend a“helping hand”,ensuring China's economic growth and political stability.When lacking tax incentives and having inconsistent goals with the central government,the local governments tend to extend a“grabbing hand”,which has a certain negative effect on budget revenue and economic growth.In the context of tax-sharing system reform,what exogenous shock does the reform of China's tax burden redistribution between the central and local governments have imposed on the costs of enterprises,and how does it affect the regional cooperation between upstream and downstream enterprises?In other words,when the burden of export tax rebates shifts from local governments to the central government,will the downstream enterprises be incentivized to cooperate with cross-regional upstream enterprises that have cost advantages?If the answer is yes,it indicates that the tax-sharing system reform,which is conducive to balancing the distribution of interests between local governments,has a substantive promotion effect on unblocking domestic circulation.The existing literature has paid little attention to the impact of the tax-sharing system reform on enterprises'cross-regional procurement behavior.This paper uses a quasi-natural experiment of export tax rebate sharing mechanism reform between the central and local governments,based on the perspective of the enterprises'cross-regional procurement behavior,to study how the exogenous shock of China's tax burden redistribution between the central and local governments affects the regional cooperation relationship between upstream and downstream enterprises,so as to provide micro-level evidence for building a“dual cycle”development pattern.By constructing a theoretical model of procurement behavior between upstream and downstream enterprises,it can be inferred that when export tax rebates are adjusted from being jointly borne by the central and local governments to being fully borne by the central government,the required time of export tax rebates for export enterprises engaged in cross-regional procurement will be shortened,and the share of cross-regional procurement expenditures for intermediate goods will increase.Using data from A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2018 for empirical testing,it is found that when the export tax rebate burden is transferred from the local governments to the central government,the export enterprises'procurement ratio from other provincial-level regions increases by 2 to 5 percentage points or so.The procurement ratio from other provincial-level regions increases by about 3 to 4 percentage points in the regions with high pre-reform financial pressure,and non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises with significant digital technology application and financing constraints experience a more pronounced increase in their procurement ratios.The results indicate that tax unification has mitigated the adverse impact of inconsistent goals between the central and local governments on enterprises,and thus the downstream enterprises can find higher quality upstream suppliers,achieve smoother and more efficient cooperation,and finally realize the unblocked domestic circulation.The policy implications of this paper are three-fold.(1)The design of incentive-compatible mechanisms is conducive to eliminating uneven distribution of interests and alleviating non-cooperative competition among local governments,improving the efficiency of export tax rebates,and achieving tax reduction and tax burden reduction for enterprises.(2)The reforms of streamlining administration and delegating power should be intensified to alleviate financing constraints of enterprises and improve production performance by improving government work efficiency.(3)The allocation of resources to enterprises with higher levels of efficiency,marketization,and innovation and research capabilities can facilitate the spontaneous optimization of their product cost structure,thereby enabling them to achieve enhanced efficiency.