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| The Impact of Tax Reduction on Debt Maturity for Small Low-Profit Firms |
| ZOU Jingxian, SHEN Guangjun, LIU Chao
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National Academy of Development Strategy, Renmin University of China;
Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University;
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China |
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Abstract At present, China's economy is facing multiple pressures, from both domestic and abroad. Under this background, the tax reduction policy is considered to have the potential to hedge the negative impacts from domestic and abroad and to facilitate the transformation of China's growth model. Studies have paid little attention to changes in firms' debt maturity when assessing the micro-impacts of tax reduction policies at firm level, but debt maturity and the related problem of maturity mismatch are important for a firm's current and future development, which can be seen in private firms' frequent bond defaults.
The debt maturity of Chinese firms is quite short compared with the debt maturity of developed countries or the maturity of Chinese firms' assets. This paper discusses the impact of tax-reduction policies on the debt maturity of small low-profit firms. Theoretically, tax reduction imposes two opposite effects on firms' debt maturity. One effect is that firms' improved profitability will encourage banks to extend debt maturity to retain firm customers, and the other is that the increased free cash flow will exaggerate the principal-agent problem between banks and firms, thus leading to a shortened debt maturity.
Based on data from the National Tax Survey (2010-2015), we use the half-reduced enterprise income tax reform as a natural experiment. We find that after the reform of tax reduction, in general, firms' debt maturity is extended. This effect is larger for firms with either a greater increase in profit or a smaller rise in free cashflow, which reconciles with our hypothesis. To further test the principal-agent mechanism proposed in this paper, we provide evidences that firms in industries expanding rapidly, industries with overcapacity risks and industries related to the real estate sector typically experience a shortening of debt maturity after tax reduction because of a strong agency cost effect. This suggests that tax reduction policies do not necessarily extend firms' debt maturity. This paper has important policy implications for improving firms' financing structure, especially for small low-profit firms.
This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, when assessing the impact of tax policies on firms, the literature mainly focuses on factors such as firm's operating performances performance, employment, investment, innovation and R&D, while firms' debt maturity is rarely discussed. However, debt maturity is related to firms' operating risks at the micro level and the industrial structure and systemic risk at the macro level. Therefore, more in-depth studies are necessary. There are two main reasons that studies do not systematically establish the connection between tax reduction policy and firms' debt maturity. One is that they belong to different fields: tax reduction policy is a classic topic of fiscal economics, while firms' debt maturity is a topic in the field of corporate finance. The other is that tax reduction policy does not simply affect a firm's debt maturity by directly changing the firm's cost and gains. The analytical framework of this paper is based on the perspective of bank decision-making to investigate how banks' decisions change with the changes in firms' performances after the tax reduction.
Second, regarding the long-standing phenomenon of Chinese firms' debt maturity being too short and the related problem of maturity mismatch, previously, policy mainly focused on banks. Although banks are quite decisive in determining firms' debt maturity, the relationship between banks and firms is not necessarily invariable. Instead, it can be marginally altered by firm's performance. An implication derived from this paper is that we can work on firm's side to improve the financing structure of firms. Such an improvement can be achieved by means of, tax reduction, fee reduction, reserve requirement reduction and interest rate reduction, etc . By improving the profitability of firms and alleviating the problem of information asymmetry, firms may improve their performance and obtain more long-term loans.
Third, because tax reduction policy has two opposite effects on firms, tax cuts do not always improve firms' debt financing structure. For example, the debt maturity of enterprises with serious information asymmetry may be shortened after a tax reduction because the agency cost effect exceeds the customer competition effect. Such unexpected policy consequences have not received sufficient attention.
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Published: 02 July 2022
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