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| Tax-Fee Substitution: VAT Tax Reduction, Non-tax Revenue Management and Corporate Investment |
| ZHAO Renjie, FAN Ziying
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| School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics |
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Abstract Tax competition has in recent years resulted in lower tax rates worldwide. Promoting corporate investment and economic development has been the key target of the large-scale tax cuts in China's tax reform policies. The reduction of value-added tax and inclusive tax cuts for small enterprises are expected to reduce the tax burden and promote investment. However, the effectiveness of the tax reduction policy has been debated and the responses of some firms do no reflect the reduction in tax. Private investment has not increased significantly since the implementation of the tax reduction policy. Does the tax reduction policy then reduce the burden on firms？ How do such policies affect corporate investment？ What factors restrict the effectiveness of tax reduction policies？ By addressing these questions we can better understand the actual effects of tax reduction policies, and thus tax reduction reforms can be further improved.
The tax reduction policies of China's central government often result in fiscal reductions for local governments under the tax sharing system. The financial stress faced by local governments from the implementation of tax reduction policies prompts us to investigate how they can strategically respond to tax reduction shocks. Non-tax fiscal revenue is essential for local governments, which they have the autonomy to collect and manage. However, the tax reduction policies implemented by the central government can reduce local tax revenues. To ensure a fiscal balance, local governments can better enforce the collection of non-tax revenues, which leads to an increase in the non-tax burden of enterprises, and the effect of “tax-fee substitution” in local fiscal revenues and corporate expenses, which eventually hinders the effectiveness of tax reduction policies.
Value-added tax is the main type of shared tax in China. When first established, value-added tax could not be deducted from the fixed assets purchased before tax, which significantly increases a firm's financial burden. In 2004, China began to pilot value-added tax transformation in its northeastern regions. This policy allows firms to deduct value-added tax from fixed assets purchased by enterprises before taxation, thus reducing the tax burden. We investigate the effect of the value-added tax reform implemented nationwide in 2009 based on prefectural city-level panel data from 2008 to 2011. The main findings are as follows. (1) The reform has greater and more adverse effects on regions that rely more on value-added taxes. (2) These regions increase non-tax revenues relative to others, and thus the value-added tax reform leads to fee-tax substitution.
In addition, based on 2008-2011 firm-level data from the national tax survey database, we use a difference-in-differences (DID) method to evaluate the impact of VAT transformation on firms' non-tax burden. We find that although the reform reduces tax burdens, it significantly increases corporate non-tax burdens. The effects of the reform on the reduction in tax for firms are not significantly different. However, the effects on the non-tax burden differ with the types and sizes of firms. Raising the non-tax burden mainly affects small, very small, and private firms. it has no significant effect on large and medium-sized firms and non-private firms. Thus, the tax and fee substitution are asymmetric. The fiscal pressure caused by tax cuts for local governments is mainly transferred to small businesses and private firms through an increase in the non-tax burden.
Tax and fee substitution will affect government fiscal revenue quality and corporate fixed asset investment behavior. Compared with taxation, local governments have greater autonomy in terms of non-tax items, and the resulting non-tax burden is much more uncertain for firms. The substitution effect of tax and fees resulting from the tax reduction policy increases the uncertainty of tax and fees for firms, prompting them to adopt more cautious investment strategies.
In the context of recent global tax cuts, we emphasize that the central government should fully consider the financial pressure that the reduction of the shared tax policy places on local governments. The fees they incur should also be reduced in the policy, along with taxes for small and very small firms. Regulating local governments' non-tax revenue collection from small and very small firms and gradually creating a central government tax and fee management process are both necessary to prevent tax reductions. Local governments have increased the non-tax collection from small and very small firms and its management, thus leading to increased uncertainty in the tax burden of small and micro enterprises, which ultimately adversely affects their development.
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Received: 25 October 2019
Published: 02 February 2021
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