Cost of Digits:Digital Transformation and Corporate Tax Burden
In recent years,the issue of enterprise digital transformation has attracted wide attention.While promoting the high-quality development of the economy and society,the enterprise digital transformation will also change the internal decision-making behavior of enterprises,and then have a profound impact on corporate tax burden.Therefore,how the en-terprise digital transformation affects corporate tax burden is worthy of in-depth discussion.This paper studies the influence degree,direction,and path of enterprise digital transformation on corporate tax bur-den.Firstly,through the construction of a mathematical model,the internal relationship between enterprise digital transfor-mation and corporate tax burden is analyzed.On this basis,with the help of the digital dictionary established by national poli-cies,the index of enterprise digital transformation is constructed by Python crawler.Based on the data of listed companies from 2011 to 2021,this paper empirically investigates the relationship between enterprise digital transformation and corpo-rate tax burden.The results show that the enterprise digital transformation mainly affects corporate tax burden through paths of"enabling production-expanding tax base"and"increasing the difficulty of collection and management-reducing the effective tax rate".Specifically,"enabling production-expanding tax base"has a positive impact,and"increasing the difficulty of collection and management-reducing the effective tax rate"has a negative impact.Combining the two effects,it is found that the enter-prise digital transformation significantly reduces corporate tax burden,and the conclusion remains robust after a series of ro-bustness tests.Heterogeneity analysis shows that this effect is more significant in enterprises with small scale,high financ-ing constraints,and poor internal control.In addition,this paper discusses the reasons for the"tax reduction effect"of enterprise digital transformation,and further analyzes the inhibitory effect of government digital transformation,especially the digitization of tax collection and management,on the"tax reduction effect"of enterprise digital transformation.It is found that the government's digital ability and digital transformation need to be improved,which is an important reason for the"tax reduction effect",and the government's digital transformation,especially the digital transformation of tax collection and management,can in-deed restrain the negative impact of enterprises digital transformation on corporate tax burden.Compared with previous studies,the possible innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects.Firstly,from the perspective of the analysis framework,this paper puts the government's digital transformation and enter-prise digital transformation in the same analytical framework,and discusses the government's digital transformation,espe-cially the digitization of tax collection and administration,to inhibit the"tax reduction effect"of enterprise digital transforma-tion,which provides empirical support for the necessity of China's tax collection and administration from"tax control by votes"to"tax control by digits".It also provides empirical evidence and policy suggestions for effectively dealing with the"tax reduction effect"brought by enterprise digitalization.Secondly,from the perspective of the impact mechanism,al-though there are studies discussing the relationship between enterprise digital transformation and corporate tax burden,this paper discusses its impact mechanism in a more in-depth and comprehensive way from two channels of"enabling production-expanding tax base"and"increasing the difficulty of collection and administration-reducing effective tax rate",thus enriching research on digital transformation and corporate tax burden.Thirdly,from the perspective of the research paradigm,in addition to empirically testing the relationship between digital transformation and corporate tax burden,this pa-per also uses mathematical modeling to analyze the internal logic of digital transformation affecting corporate tax burden.
Enterprise Digital TransformationCorporate Tax BurdenGovernment Digital Transformation
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NSTL
万方数据
