Study On The Tax Policy Of High-tech Industry

Nowadays, the innovation of science and technology is playing amore important role in promoting a country’s economics, and high-techindustry is occupying a more important position in the economical growthof all countries. In China, healthy development of high-tech industryserves as a key factor ensuring not only stable and rapid economic growth,but also successful transition of economic structure, and a series of taxpolicies is introduced to stimulate the development of high-tech industry.However, high-tech industry has its unique economic attributes, and howto formulate tax policy scientifically and rationally on high-tech industrydeserves in-depth research.In China, there is no unified tax law about high-tech industry, but taxpolicy of high-tech industry exists in almost all categories of taxes, suchas enterprise income tax, value-added tax, business tax. During the pasttwo years, tax policy of high-tech industry has changed a lot. The newEnterprise Income Tax Law highlights the benefits of tax base ofhigh-tech enterprises, and comprehensive transformation of value-added tax drastically bolsters technological innovation. With the constantlychanging of the tax policy, we need to keep track of the policyimplementation to find out the problems encountered in policy operationwith the tax bureau and high-tech enterprises. Shanghai is China’seconomic centre, where high-tech enterprises converged and maturelydeveloped. This paper will study empirically the implementation of thecurrent tax policy of high-tech industry and find out the existing problems,serving as an assessment and feedback of the policy, providing referencefor the further improvement of it.Firstly, we analyze the economic character of high-tech industry, suchas behavior of costs, factors of risk profile, the asymmetry of information,and externality. Based on theories related to tax preferences, we stated thenecessity of promoting high-tech industry with tax preferences, and thenillustrate the general method of tax preferences in high-tech industry.Through analyzing the statistical data, we reveal the currentimplementation status of tax policy in Shanghai high-tech industry fromvarieties of angles—total tax revenue, sub policy project and taximplementation of different industry sectors. Based on specific cases ofpolicy operating by tax bureau and enterprises, we states the existingproblems of current tax policy from several aspects, including enterpriseincome tax, value-added tax, high-tech verification measures, andcoordination mechanism between government departments. In the part of foreign policy learning, by contrasting and analyzing the features of taxpolicy of the USA and Japan, and some other countries, we conclude theenlightenment and experience, including how to determine preferentialtarget and how to select preferential measures. Finally, we put forwardour concrete measures and proposals.