Effects Of Environmental Tax On Green Technology Innovation In China

China’s economic development has been rapidly promoted after the reform and opening up,while the environment has been seriously damaged.This goes against China’s goal of building an environment-friendly and resource-conserving society.In 2018,the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China came into effect.The tax targets are air pollutants,water pollutants,solid waste and noise,and the tax method has changed from pollutant discharge fees levied by environmental protection authorities in the past to environmental protection taxes levied by tax authorities.This paper analyzes the effect of environmental tax on green technology innovation in China.According to the theory of production cost,environmental tax will increase the cost of enterprises,which will have a negative effect on green technology innovation.According to Porter’s theory,environmental tax will force enterprises to innovate,improve production efficiency and competitiveness,and have a positive effect on green technology innovation.In order to understand the effect of environmental tax on green technology innovation in China,this paper takes green technology innovation as the explained variable,and measures it by the amount of green patent,green process innovation and green product innovation respectively.The provincial panel data from 2010 to 2017 were selected as the research samples for data regression to obtain the test results,and the test was conducted in the eastern,central and western regions.The results show that the environmental tax in China has a significant effect on the number of green patent grants and green technology innovation,but not on green product innovation,which indicates that the environmental tax has an incentive effect on green technology innovation,but in practice,the transformation of green product needs to be improved.At the same time,the central region is significant,but the eastern and western regions are not.Finally,according to the empirical results and based on the current development of environmental tax and green technology innovation,this paper puts forward targeted policy suggestions to expand the scope of environmental tax collection,determine the appropriate tax rate,and improve the transformation of green product achievements.