Modernization of Tax Governance and Total Factor Productivity of Enterprises: Research Based on Quasi-natural Experiment of Tax Credit Rating

Abstract

Tax revenue is the main way for the state to absorb fiscal revenue, and it also plays a fundamental, pillar and guarantee role in national governance. Therefore, the modernization of tax governance is an important part of the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity. The realization of this goal requires the tax department not only to levy taxes according to law under the legal principle, and provide financial guarantee for national governance, but also to take into account the tax service, improve the tax business environment, and inject vitality into the high-quality economic development. At present, China’s economy has changed from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage, and is in the critical period of transforming the development mode, optimizing the economic structure and transforming the growth momentum, so it is urgent to improve the total factor productivity. Combined with this realistic background, this paper aims to answer: Can the modernization of tax governance promote enterprises to improve the total factor productivity? This is an important issue.In 2014, the State Administration of Taxation issued“the Measures for the Administration of Tax Payment Credit（Trial）”, which carries out the investigation, rating and public release of the tax credit status of enterprises every year, and implements joint credit incentive measures based on the rating results, so as to promote the integrity and self-discipline of taxpayers and improve the compliance of tax law. In practice, the tax authorities promote the“bank-tax interaction”across the country, exchange“credit”for“credit”incentive measures to help enterprises develop. According to the statistics of the tax department, by the end of September 2019, banking financial institutions across the country have issued 1.069 million loans related to“bank-tax interaction”to trustworthy enterprises, involving a total of 1.57 trillion yuan of bank tax loans. As a new type of tax governance, the enterprise tax credit management measures effectively fit the modern tax governance concept, and provide rich materials and appropriate entry point for our research. This paper takes the disclosure of corporate tax credit rating data in 2015 as a quasi-natural experiment, and uses the PSM-DID method to empirically analyze the impact effect, heterogeneity performance and mechanism of tax governance modernization on the total factor productivity of enterprises.This paper finds that: The implementation of enterprise tax credit rating system significantly improves the total factor productivity of enterprises, and this effect is more obvious for non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises with greater financing constraints. Further analysis shows that the above positive effects are mainly achieved by alleviating the financing constraints of enterprises, improving investment efficiency and playing the role of corporate governance. This conclusion provides empirical evidence for understanding the micro effect of tax governance modernization, affirms its positive role in high-quality economic development, and provides policy reference for improving the existing tax governance measures. In the future, we should pay attention to the collaborative governance effect of flexible incentive collection and management measures, further improve the tax credit evaluation system, and build a tax collection and management system with the“Tax Collection and Management Law”as the guide, and the tax risk management and tax credit system construction as the two wings, so as to lay a scientific and strict system foundation for continuously improving the tax governance ability and building a modern tax governance system.