税收优惠、多元化经营与集团公司避税

Tax Incentives,Diversification and Group Company Tax Avoidance

税收优惠是实行宏观调控和推动现代化产业体系建设的重要政策工具,但也带来了行业间税率差异,为集团公司通过涉足低税率行业实施利润转移与避税提供了条件,造成税收政策扭曲。本文基于2008年实施的农业企业所得税优惠政策,根据2005~2015年的上市公司及其子公司数据研究发现:针对农业的税收优惠会显著增加非农行业集团公司的涉农经营和避税行为,非农行业母公司中农业子公司占比增加10%,母公司和集团公司实际税率分别下降0.86%和1.71%,涉农经营显著提升了非农企业的避税程度。异质性分析显示,这一效应主要体现在融资约束较大、政府税收征管较弱以及市场关注度较低的企业中。机制检验表明,非农业母公司会通过关联交易将利润转移给农业类子公司,降低母公司利润,导致农业子公司利润率与其他子公司相比显著提高,且主要渠道是关联购买。本文不仅从行业税收优惠角度完善了关于集团企业避税行为的研究,也为理解产业政策的效果和企业多元化经营动机提供了新的视角,对完善税收优惠和转变产业政策实施思路具有借鉴意义。

Industrial policies have played an important role in promoting the development of China's emerging industries and catching up with backward industries.As a basic industry affecting the national economy and people's livelihood,agriculture has always been a key area of industrial policy implementation.Since the reform and opening up,the government has continuously strengthened its industrial policy support for agriculture.Especially in 2008,The new Enterprise Income Tax Law implemented that enterprises engaged in agriculture,forestry,animal husbandry and fishing projects are exempt from or halved the enterprise income tax,including the cultivation of vegetables,grains,fruits and Chinese medicinal herbs,forest cultivation,poultry and livestock raising,and primary processing of agricultural products.Items such as agricultural machinery operations and maintenance are exempt from taxes,and items such as the cultivation of beverage crops and spice crops,mariculture and inland farming are halved.This policy not only expanded the scope of application of preferential tax policies for agriculture-related operations,but also significantly reduced the applicable tax rates for agricultural production enterprises,decreasing the tax burden on a large number of agricultural enterprises.Under the guidance of agriculture-related industrial policies,agricultural production have been significantly improved.However,there is information asymmetry between the government and the market,resulting in that the government cannot accurately identify the enterprises.This issue really needs support by means of“one-size-fits-all”industrial policies,and inevitably leads to the adverse selection behavior of enterprises using preferential policies to manipulate operation.In particular,tax incentives for agricultural operations have led to significant differences in tax rates among different peers,which provides opportunities for group companies to avoid taxes by engaging in the agricultural sector.In addition,the application conditions of this policy are relatively relaxed,mainly based on whether the enterprise business project belongs to the agricultural category as the key standard,which greatly reduces the cost of group enterprises to implement tax avoidance through new agricultural business.Based on the income tax reduction and exemption policy for agricultural projects,this paper uses hand-collected data of parent-subsidiary companies of listed groups from 2005 to 2015 to measure the degree of agriculture-related operations according to the proportion of agricultural subsidiaries,and studies how non-agricultural enterprises using agricultural tax incentives to avoid taxes through diversified operations.The results show that,first,compared with agricultural enterprises,non-agricultural parent companies significantly increase the proportion of investment in agricultural subsidiaries after the implementation of the policy,which significantly reduces the effective tax rate of parent companies and group companies.Second,heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive impact of tax incentives on the agriculture-related operations of non-agricultural parent companies is mainly reflected in enterprises with large financing constraints,weak government tax collection and management,and low market attention.Third,the mechanism test shows that profit transfer is an important way for non-agricultural parent companies to implement tax avoidance.The higher the proportion of agricultural subsidiaries,the lower the profit rate of assets of non-agricultural parent companies,but the profit rate of its agricultural subsidiaries is significantly higher than that of other subsidiaries in the group and agricultural subsidiaries in the agricultural parent companies.The profit transfer is mainly achieved through related purchases of non-agricultural parent companies from agricultural subsidiaries.The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows:First,it has enriched the research on corporate tax avoidance and profit shifting behavior.Most of the existing literature studies the profit shifting and tax avoidance behavior of group enterprises in cross-regional investment based on the tax rate differences between countries and regions.This paper reveals another way to realize tax avoidance of group enterprises from the perspective of industry tax incentives,and improves the relevant research on enterprises,using tax incentives to implement strategic tax avoidance.Second,the relevant literature on the implementation effect of industrial policy and its influencing factors is expanded.A large number of literature have evaluated the actual effect of industrial policy,but the research conclusions have not reached a consensus.This paper reveals the possible reasons for the failure of industrial policy when it is implemented in the form of tax incentives from the perspective of tax avoidance.Third,it enriches the relevant research on enterprise diversification.Diversification is a typical feature of group enterprises.Existing studies mainly discuss the influencing factors of enterprise diversification from the aspects of economic environment uncertainty,government policy intervention,market incentives and individual characteristics of enterprises.This paper provides a new perspective for understanding enterprise diversification from the perspective of tax avoidance.Finally,this paper helps to understand the risks contained in the implementation process of tax incentives in industrial policies,and provides policy enlightenment for improving the effectiveness of tax incentives and optimizing the tax governance system.