Environmental Regulation and Firms'Tax Compliance:Effects,Mechanism and Solutions
Taxation,as a cornerstone of public finance,plays a foundational,pivotal,and safeguarding role in national governance,promoting national prosperity.However,aggressive tax avoidance and criminal tax evasion,which divert state tax revenues into private wealth,undermine fair market competition and weaken the government's macroeconomic regulatory capabilities.These activities hinder the provision of public goods and services and erode national capacity.With the continuous strengthening of environmental regulation in China,the environmental compliance cost has become an important factor affecting the development of firms.While stringent environmental regulations improve environmental quality,they may simultaneously reduce corporate profits and investment,lower total factor productivity,and negatively impact business performance.As environmental costs rise,firms may be more motivated to engage in tax avoidance activities to increase after-tax profits and retained earnings,thereby shifting the burden of environmental compliance to the tax domain.Thus,the core question this paper aims to examine is:How do firms'tax compliance behaviors change when the government intensifies environmental regulations?Are there unintended policy interactions between different government departments?Furthermore,how can complementary measures be implemented to mitigate these cross-departmental negative spillover effects?Based on the matched dataset of tax survey data and enterprise pollution emission data,this paper studies the impact of improving environmental regulation on firms'tax compliance.Taking advantage of the National Specially Monitored Firms(NSMF)program in China which improves environmental regulation,we construct a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design for causal identification.We find that increasing environmental regulation has a significantly positive effect on firms'tax avoidance.The mechanism analysis shows that the NSMF program improves the firm's environmental costs,which promotes firms with cash-constraints and smaller scales to engage more in tax avoidance.Our study also provides evidence that the expansion of pre-tax deduction categories is an important way through which firms avoid tax.Further analysis shows that the tax avoidance effect of environmental regulation can be alleviated by taxation policy.This paper not only enriches the literature on the micro-level impacts of environmental regulation and the spillover effects between government departments,but also provides quantitative empirical evidence to address the negative effects of environmental regulation in the tax domain.The findings of this study have significant practical implications.First,stringent environmental regulation policies may exacerbate financial difficulties for firms,substantially increasing the potential benefits of tax avoidance.This necessitates that the government recognize the potential cross-departmental policy spillover effects of environmental regulation.As environmental policies are updated with increasing frequency and compliance costs continue to rise,the government must enhance the precision and effectiveness of these regulations while avoiding excessive pressure on firms'production and operations due to rising policy costs.A feasible solution is for the government to continue increasing tax incentives for firms with good compliance records,such as environmental investment credits and accelerated depreciation for environmental equipment.This approach can alleviate financing constraints and production pressures by boosting cash flow and reducing investment friction.Second,to further improve tax compliance,the central government should actively establish and enhance information-sharing mechanisms among different government departments.This includes promoting the exchange and sharing of tax-related information between tax authorities and environmental protection,commerce,and other departments to break down the barriers of"information silos"and prevent strategic evasion by firms.Additionally,the government should strengthen the innovation and technological advancement of tax collection methods,incorporating new technologies such as big data,cloud computing,and artificial intelligence into tax administration to improve the accuracy,transparency,and credibility of tax information.It should also enhance tax education and publicity to deepen taxpayers'understanding of tax laws and increase corporate tax compliance.
万方数据
维普
