管理工程学报2024，Vol.38Issue(3)：58-75,18.DOI:10.13587/j.cnki.jieem.2024.03.005
财政透明度与企业避税行为
Fiscal transparency and corporate tax avoidance
摘要
Abstract
Fiscal transparency reflects the degree of government's disclosure on fiscal funds.It can effectively improve the efficiency and honesty of government operation,reduce the possible abuse of fiscal funds,and restrain inefficient investment behaviors such as idle funds by exerting the role of public supervision.Extant studies on fiscal transparency mainly focuses on the level of government and region.Few types of research intensely discuss the influence of fiscal transparency,a macro-institutional factor,on micro-economic subjects such as enterprises.Correspondingly,tax behavior is an important bridge connecting the relationship between enterprises and government and an essential manifestation of macro-system influencing enterprise behavior.At the same time,as a critical factor affecting the business development of enterprises,tax evasion can not only bring direct cash inflow and performance benefits to enterprises,but also produce a specific reputation loss risk and administrative penalty cost.Therefore,based on the above analysis,this paper believes that it is of high academic value to explore the macro-influencing factors of corporate tax avoidance behavior. To further explore the micro-economic consequences of local government fiscal transparency,this paper selects non-financial listed companies in China's A-share market from 2014 to 2019 as research samples to empirically test the impact of fiscal transparency on corporate tax avoidance.The data of fiscal transparency comes from the Research Report on Fiscal Transparency of Chinese Municipal Governments released by the School of Public Administration of Tsinghua University,which evaluates the information disclosure of local governments in terms of the organization setting and budget disclosure.The higher the score is,the higher the fiscal transparency is.This paper puts forward two influence paths in the opposite direction based on the existing research conclusions.Path 1 argues that the improvement of prefectural government fiscal transparency,on the one hand,can improve local fiscal expenditure efficiency and reduce the fiscal pressure to minimize enterprises'total potential future earnings of paying taxes,on the other hand,can improve the local business environment to attract foreign investment and increase the intensity of competition in the market,both could encourage companies to adopt a more positive tax avoidance.Path 2 believes that the improvement of government fiscal transparency will improve the willingness of enterprises to comply with tax by increasing government integrity;meanwhile,the restraint of fiscal fund discipline can promote the government to enforce tax strictly,thus reducing the degree of corporate tax avoidance. The empirical results support the positive path.The improvement of government fiscal transparency significantly increases RATE,which is equal to the difference between the nominal tax rate and the effective tax rate,also indicates the increase of enterprises'subjectively tax avoidance behavior.Mechanism tests show that fiscal expenditure efficiency and fiscal pressure mediate this process,and the path of fiscal transparency influencing corporate tax avoidance behavior through the intensity of market competition and tax administration is not found.After using mineral resource dependence and Bartik as instrumental variables to control endogenous,using the budget and budget implementation score in the fiscal transparency score system to replace the independent variable,using effective tax rate of enterprises(ETR),book-tax differences(BTD),and fixed effect residual of BTD(DDBTD)to replace the dependent variable,and using the propensity score matching(PSM)method,the main results remain the same and show solid robustness. Further results in cross-sectional tests show that:At the corporate level,private enterprises are weaker than state-owned enterprises in market competition and financing channels,high financing constrained enterprises have a higher demand for cash flow and performance profits,and enterprises with violation records have higher tendency of opportunism.Therefore,the impact of fiscal transparency on enterprise tax avoidance is more substantial in these kinds of enterprises.At the regional level,high public service expenditure accounts for a lower operating efficiency of regional governments,which makes the improvement of fiscal transparency play a more vital role in improving efficiency,and the advancement of enterprise tax avoidance is more significant;The intensity of tax collection and management reflects the government's inspection of enterprise tax avoidance,so the impact of fiscal transparency on enterprise tax avoidance is weaker in areas with higher law enforcement intensity;In regions with better business environment and higher competition,the cost and demand of tax avoidance is also stronger,leading to a more significant role of fiscal transparency. In summary,this paper focuses on the impact of the macro phenomenon of government fiscal transparency on the micro behavior of corporate tax behavior,which fills the gap in the field of microeconomic consequences of fiscal transparency and further enriches the research on the macro influencing factors of corporate tax behavior,has specific theoretical significance and contribution.At the same time,at the practice level,the research conclusion is helpful to guide the local governments at all levels to continue deepening fiscal information transparency,help enterprises to adjust the allocation of resources,including tax policy.It can also provide a specific theoretical basis and practical guidance for researching the macro and micro governance role of government information disclosure,promoting a clean and efficient fiscal system and a healthy relationship between government and enterprises,and encouraging the rational allocation of enterprise resources.关键词
财政透明/企业避税/财政支出效率/财政压力Key words
Fiscal transparency/Corporate tax avoidance/Fiscal expenditure efficiency/Fiscal pressure分类
管理科学引用本文复制引用
田高良,刘晓丰,司毅..财政透明度与企业避税行为[J].管理工程学报,2024,38(3):58-75,18.基金项目
国家自然科学基金项目(72002165、71672141) （72002165、71672141）
教育部人文社会科学基金项目(20YJC790116) The National Natural Science Foundation of China(72002165,71672141) （20YJC790116）
The Social Science Foundation of The Chinese Education Commission(20YJC790216) （20YJC790216）
