From Affiliation to Sharing:Fiscal Benefits,Unified Market and High-quality Development of Enterprises
The contradiction between the integrity of development and the initiative of development runs through the reform of China's economic system,and its important manifestation is the opposition between market integration and segmentation.To break the market segmentation and accelerate cross-region economic integration,it is imperative to explore the incentive effect of the tax distribution system on market integration.Since the tax distribution system reform,the central government has reversed the distortion of market segmentation by changing the main liquidity tax from a subordinate tax to a shared tax.Regarding corporate income tax,on the one hand,the central and provincial governments participate in the sharing of tax revenue,and the local governments face income tax losses.On the other hand,the income tax revenues are no longer divided according to administrative affiliation,which means that the local governments can benefit from all local enterprises rather than just affiliated ones.For the local governments,the more the tax sharing proportion falls in the reform,the more the benefits derived from affiliated firms fall and the weaker the incentive to implement local protection.Therefore,it gives local governments the impetus to build a unified market,and the result of competition for liquidity factors determines the inter-regional attribution of tax revenues.Based on the difference in income tax losses caused by fiscal system documents of provinces,we empirically test the relationship between fiscal benefits,unified market,and total factor productivity of enterprises using the difference-in-difference method.We find that the higher the income tax loss of local government,the more the TFP of enterprises increases,and the effect mainly exists in nonaffiliated and private enterprises.Further,the reform has a stronger impact on small and medium-sized enterprises,enterprises located on provincial borders,and enterprises in the central and western regions of China.The reform has changed the policy tool preferred by the local governments from fiscal subsidies to tax incentives.This reveals that the policy target has changed from local protection to investment attraction and has thus played a role in optimizing the firm entry and exit mechanism,reducing the nonproductive expenditure of enterprises,and weakening the market monopoly power.The result of the TFP decomposition reveals that the growth and exit effects are the main sources of improvement.To build a unified large market,the fiscal system must be further adjusted.First,the role of the tax sharing system in coordinating the integrity of development and the enthusiasm for development must be paid attention to by the central government,and a balance should be found in the attribution of fiscal revenues.It is necessary to not only strengthen the central macroeconomic control ability but also give local governments some fiscal autonomy to stimulate institutional innovation.Second,the central government needs to improve the rules for tax sharing among governments at all levels.The tax revenue with a strong tax base and uneven distribution among regions can be changed from a subordinate tax to a shared tax and shared more by the higher government.For the tax with a relatively stable tax base and obvious regional attribute,it can be classified as a local tax or shared by local governments to alleviate their expenditure pressures.Third,the subordinate tax system below the provincial level should be broken,and the provincial government's tax sharing proportion of liquid tax should be appropriately increased.For regions with relatively backward marketization such as the central and western regions,the provincial governments can share more liquid tax revenue under the same conditions,which can strengthen their abilities for regulation and control to achieve the goal of coordinated development and common prosperity.
万方数据
维普
