Research On The Impact Of Environmental Protection Tax On Technological Innovation Of Enterprises

Since the implementation of the reform and opening up policy in China,the economy has entered a stage of rapid development.However,with the rapid development of the social economy,China has experienced relatively serious environmental pollution and resource consumption issues,which in turn affect economic development,making it urgent to address environmental pollution issues.In the face of serious environmental issues,China officially implemented the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China in January 2018,Incorporate environmental protection into legal procedures.Enterprises,as producers of pollutants and taxpayers of environmental protection taxes,naturally become the main body of environmental protection.In the context of the introduction of environmental protection,people have gradually paid attention to issues related to environmental protection.The relationship between environmental protection taxes and enterprise technological innovation has been the focus of scholars’ research.Faced with the imposition of environmental protection taxes,most enterprises have two attitudes: one is that they actively respond by reducing the amount of environmental pollution emissions through technological innovation and upgrading,thereby reducing the amount of environmental protection taxes paid,and shouldering the responsibility for environmental protection;The other type of enterprise is a passive response,believing that the amount of environmental protection tax paid by the enterprise is far lower than the cost of technological innovation,and therefore unwilling to increase investment in technological innovation.Will levying environmental protection taxes promote technological innovation in enterprises? Is the key content of this study.This article first reviewed relevant literature,including environmental protection tax and enterprise technology innovation.Based on externality theory,Pigou tax theory,"double dividend" theory,and Porter hypothesis theory,it selected A-share listed companies in China from 2012 to 2020 as research samples,and used enterprise innovation investment as the core explanatory variable to construct a dual difference model(PSM-DID)with propensity score matching,To empirically examine the impact of levying environmental protection taxes on enterprise technological innovation,and explore the policy effects of environmental protection taxes.Empirical analysis shows that the introduction of environmental protection tax can significantly promote enterprise technological innovation,and the implementation of environmental protection tax law significantly promotes enterprise R&D investment.This article conducts three methods of robustness testing:first,a placebo test,which eliminates the interference of other unknown factors on the empirical results.The second is to test the parallel trend hypothesis.Third,change the definition of core explanatory variables and shorten the investigation time.Replace the proportion of R&D investment in operating revenue with a new regression;Due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020,the data may be affected,so the data in2020 will be removed and regressed again.The above three methods have passed the robustness test.In addition,this article has conducted further research and found that,in different regions where enterprises are located,the introduction of environmental protection taxes significantly promotes technological innovation among enterprises in the eastern and central regions,while the promotion effect on enterprises in the western regions is not significant;In enterprises with different ownership systems,environmental protection taxes can significantly promote technological innovation in state-owned enterprises.In order to better exert the policy effect of environmental protection tax,reduce environmental pollution,promote enterprise innovation,and save energy and reduce emissions,this article proposes the following suggestions based on the empirical analysis results: First,optimize the environmental protection tax system,and exert the policy effect of environmental protection.Second,pay attention to the nature of property rights and regional differences,and improve the efficiency of enterprise innovation.Third,make reasonable use of environmental protection tax revenue to continuously stimulate technological innovation in enterprises.