增值税留抵退税的环境治理效应:绿色并购的视角

Environmental Governance Effect of the Uncredited Value-added Tax Refund:From Green M&A Perspective

绿色并购是重污染企业快速实现绿色转型发展的重要途径,但重污染企业通常面临融资约束和环境规制的双重限制,这种资源约束抑制了其实施绿色并购战略的能力。包含减税在内的激励型政策工具对企业流动性的缓解可能发挥积极的环境治理效应,作为当前中国力度最大的减税政策,增值税留抵退税能否激励重污染企业进行绿色并购从而发挥环境治理效应,尚无研究对此展开探讨。基于信号传递理论和资源依赖理论,选取2015年至2021年A股重污染行业上市企业作为研究样本,以2018年实施的增值税留抵退税试点政策为准自然实验,运用双重差分法分析增值税留抵退税能否通过激励重污染企业实施绿色并购发挥环境治理效应,进一步考察减税政策激励下的绿色并购是出于“实质绿色”还是“漂绿工具”。从留抵税款、融资约束、地方政府环保意识和媒体关注度4个方面,探讨重污染企业绿色转型的能力和动机对增值税留抵退税政策发挥环境治理作用的影响。研究结果表明,增值税留抵退税政策提高了试点重污染企业绿色并购的概率,且这种绿色并购改善了企业的环境绩效。进一步研究发现,目标企业并未集中于环境规制弱的城市,且绿色并购具有重大交易占比高、业绩承诺金额少的特征,在一定程度上排除了“污染转移”和“漂绿工具”的竞争性假说。异质性分析表明留抵退税对绿色并购的激励作用受企业能力和动机的影响,表现为留抵税款金额大、融资约束程度高、地方政府环保意识强、受媒体关注度高使留抵退税政策对重污染企业绿色并购的激励作用更为明显。研究结果证实了减税政策这一激励型政策工具能够促进企业进行绿色并购,进而发挥积极的环境治理作用,不仅对企业实现绿色发展具有一定的指导意义,也为政府采用激励型政策工具进行环境治理提供了证据支撑。

Green M&A plays an important role in achieving rapid green transformation and development for heavy polluting enterprises.However,they face"double penalties"in the capital market:financial constraints and environmental regulations.Also,such resource constraints prevent them from implementing green M&A strategies.Various incentive-based policy instru-ments,including tax reductions,may have a positive effect on environmental governance to improve corporate liquidity.As China's most effective tax reduction policy,the uncredited value-added tax(VAT)refund hasn't been studied to establish whether it can incentivize heavy polluting enterprises to engage in green M&A,thus achieving a positive effect on environmental governance.With the uncredited VAT refund as implemented in 2018 as a quasinatural experiment,the difference-in-differences model is constructed by selecting those A-shares listed companies in the heavy polluting enterprises from 2015 to 2021 as the research sample.The signaling theory and resource dependence theory are applied to analyze whether the uncredited VAT refund promotes environmental governance by incentivizing heavy polluting enterprises to implement green M&A.Furthermore,it is examined whether green M&A incentivized by the uncredited VAT refund is a substantive green tool or a greenwashing tool.Finally,the impact of heavy polluters'ability and motivation to achieve green transformation on the effectiveness of the VAT tax credit policy in environmental governance is examined from four angles:VAT credit,financing constraints,the environmental awareness of local governments,and media attention.According to the results of this study,the uncredited VAT refund significantly increases the probability of green M&A by the polluting companies participating in the pilot while improving their environmental performance.Furthermore,this study reveals that the target companies do not concentrate in cities with weak environmental regulations and that green M&A is characterized by a large proportion of significant transactions and low performance commitments,which rejects the competing hypotheses of pollution transfer and greenwashing tools to a certain extent.The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that the promoting effect of VAT credit on green M&A is affected by the ability and motivation of enterprises,which indicates that the promoting effect of VAT credit on green M&A is more significant when the scale of the tax credit carry-forward is large,the level of financing constraint is high,the environmental awareness of local governments is strong,or there is much attention drawn from the press.The findings of this study confirm that green M&A can improve the environmental performance of heavy polluting enterprises,which empirically evidences the effects of tax reduction policies on environmental governance.The results of this study provide not only guidance for companies to achieve green development but also reference for the government to adopt incentive-based policy instruments to carry out environmental governance.