The Impact Of Environmental Protection Tax On Enterprise Innovation Effect

China officially introduced the Environmental Protection Tax to solve the longstanding serious environmental problems in 2018,intending to transform the traditional "downstream pollution control" method into a new "source pollution control" method.In this context,through theoretical analysis and empirical analysis,this paper studies the impact of environmental protection tax on enterprise innovation effect,so as to evaluate the incentive effect of environmental protection tax on enterprise innovation.First of all,this article uses the literature research method and normative analysis method to sort out the research results of the relationship between environmental regulation and enterprise innovation,and then analyzes the theoretical basis of the impact of environmental protection tax on enterprise innovation,including externality theory and public goods theory,Porter hypothesis and environmental Kuznets curve.Specifically,firstly,environmental problems have distinct negative externalities,which can be corrected by the idea of "Pigou tax" or Coase’s theorem.Environmental protection tax is exactly a modern extension of "Pigou tax".Secondly,as public good,the environment will face market failures such as insufficient private supply,so the government needs to introduce policy interventions,such as formulating environmental tax policies.Thirdly,to realize the "Porter Hypothesis" in China,the tax system design of environmental protection tax must be strict and flexible.Lastly,the environmental Kuznets curve indicates that the tax system design of environmental protection tax should take into account the level of my country’s macroeconomic development.Secondly,this article introduces the institutional background,the comparison between taxes and fees,and the mechanism of action.The first is to sort out the historical changes in my country’s environmental taxes and fees.From pollution discharge fees to environmental protection taxes,China has experienced a long transitional period of adjustment.The second is to compare the theoretical and actual functions of pollution discharge fees and environmental protection taxes.Although environmental protection taxes are very similar to pollution discharge fees,environmental protection taxes are more in line with China’s reality.Therefore,its revenue-raising function and emission reduction incentive function are important More prominent.The third is the theoretical analysis of the mechanism of environmental protection tax on corporate innovation.The negative cost constraint mechanism and the positive innovation incentive mechanism work together to promote corporate innovation in the long run,thereby achieving the improvement of the industry’s innovation level.Finally,this article uses the empirical analysis method to study the impact of environmental protection tax on corporate innovation using the difference-indifferences model of double fixed effects.Studies have shown that environmental protection taxes have significantly promoted enterprise technological innovation and have heterogeneity in enterprise ownership and the nature of the industry.This conclusion passes several robustness tests.On this basis,this article proposes that China’s environmental protection tax should be reformed and improved in supporting policies,tax system design,and tax collection and management in order to further exert the incentive effect of environmental protection tax on enterprise innovation.The innovation of this article lies in the choice of research perspective and research methods.Firstly,this article focuses on the technological innovation behavior of micro-enterprises,especially industrial enterprises,which enriches the research of environmental protection tax in the micro-field,and helps to directly reveal the relationship between environmental protection tax and enterprise innovation.Secondly,this article chooses the environmental protection tax policy as a quasi-natural experiment,which is different from the research methods of predictive analysis and simulation analysis.Using the data before and after the environmental protection tax is levied can directly restore the behavior of the enterprise in response to this policy and further strip out the impact of environmental protection tax on corporate innovation.