A Study On The Impact Of Replacing Pollutant Discharge Fee With Environmental Protection Tax On The Financialization Of Heavy Polluting Enterprises

In recent years,affected by the economic downturn,China’s real enterprises have experienced a decline in the rate of return on investment and turned to the financial sector.Moderate financialization can strengthen the liquidity reserve of enterprises,but excessive financialization based on investment substitution motive will crowd out the real investment,which is not conducive to the development of the main business of enterprises.Compared with general enterprises,the financialization of heavily polluting enterprises is prone to produce strong negative externalities on the environment,and it is difficult to meet the growing environmental demands of the public.A good institutional environment is indispensable to control the transformation of heavy polluting enterprises from real to virtual.On Jan 1,2018,the Environmental Protection Tax Law came into effect,marking the replacement of the pollutant discharge fee,which had been in place for nearly 40 years.Compared with pollutant discharge fee,environmental protection tax has many advantages.Domestic and foreign experts and scholars have studied the policy effect of replacing pollutant discharge fee with environmental protection tax from many perspectives,but few scholars have studied its impact on the investment preference of heavy polluting enterprises.In addition,in terms of influencing factors of enterprise financialization,most scholars study from the level of macroeconomic policies,and some scholars pay attention to environmental regulation and tax policies,but they also start from policies that have been implemented for a long time.Environmental protection tax has not been implemented for a long time,and few scholars study its impact on enterprise financialization.Therefore,this paper establishes the connection between the change of pollutant discharge fee to environmental protection tax and the financialization of heavy polluting enterprises,in order to provide reference for the Chinese government to further optimize the design of fiscal and tax policy and guide the industrial capital flow of heavy polluting enterprises.Through theoretical analysis,this paper finds that the replacement of pollutant discharge fee with environmental protection tax has both promoting and inhibiting effects on the financialization of heavily polluting enterprises.Therefore,this paper puts forward two competing hypotheses and selects the data of A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2020.Based on the official implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law in 2018,A differential model is established to empirically study the impact of the replacement of pollutant discharge fee with environmental protection tax on the financialization of heavily polluting enterprises.On this basis,the robustness of the regression results was tested by parallel trend test,propensity score matching test,placebo test and replacement of explained variables.Finally,this paper further studies the following issues :(1)The mechanism of the impact of the change of pollutant discharge fee to environmental protection tax on the financialization of heavily polluting enterprises.(2)The heterogeneity of the relationship between the two in terms of expropriation standards,media attention and property rights.The results show that :(1)On the whole,replacing pollutant discharge fee with environmental protection tax significantly inhibits the financialization of heavy polluting enterprises,which is still significant after a series of robustness tests.(2)Through the mechanism test,this paper finds that the replacement of pollutant discharge fee with environmental protection tax can inhibit the financialization behavior of heavy polluting enterprises by promoting their increase of real investment.On this basis,this paper further tested the mechanism of environmental protection investment and R&D investment in entity investment,and found that the replacement of pollutant discharge fee with environmental protection tax promoted the environmental protection investment of heavy polluting enterprises,which inhibited the level of financialization,and the mediating effect of environmental protection investment was established.However,when examining the mediating effect of R&D investment,this paper found that the replacement of pollutant discharge fee with environmental protection tax significantly inhibited the R&D investment of heavy polluting enterprises,and the mediating effect of R&D investment was not established.This indicates that under the pressure of environmental legitimacy brought by the policy,R&D investment is not the priority choice for heavy polluting enterprises in the short to medium term.(3)Through heterogeneity analysis,this paper finds that the financialization level of heavily polluting enterprises with higher collection standards and higher media attention after the change of pollutant discharge fee to environmental protection tax is significantly inhibited.In addition,the replacement of pollutant discharge fee with environmental protection tax significantly inhibited the financialization level of non-state-owned enterprises,and had no significant impact on state-owned enterprises.Finally,according to the research conclusions,this paper puts forward policy suggestions for the government to further improve the relevant policy mechanism,promote heavy polluting enterprises to further reduce financial investment,increase real investment,and develop green production under the regulation of environmental protection tax.From the theoretical level,this article on the basis of the existing literature to further expand the discharge change of taxation on environmental protection and the study of relationship between financialization heavily polluting enterprises,not only helps to clarify the formation mechanism of polluting enterprises financialization and resolve path,from the point of view of environmental tax and fee reform to promote the researches of the pollution enterprise financialization,It is also helpful to expand the theoretical understanding of the microeconomic effects of replacing the pollutant discharge fee with the environmental protection tax,and fill in the deficiencies of related research fields.From a practical point of view,this paper finds that although the change of pollutant discharge fee to environmental protection tax has inhibited the level of heavy pollution financialization,there are still some shortcomings,such as inhibiting the R&D investment of heavy polluting enterprises,and the policy effect on state-owned enterprises and regions without improving the collection standard is not obvious.The positive effect and shortcomings of the change from pollutant discharge fee to environmental protection tax on restraining the financialization of heavy polluting enterprises provide reference for the government to further improve the environmental protection tax system and related supporting policies,and provide guidance for heavy polluting enterprises to further improve the environmental legitimacy under the policy regulation of environmental protection tax.This is not only conducive to accelerating the transformation of investment structure of heavy polluting enterprises,but also conducive to the realization of green economic development,the coordinated development of virtual economy and real economy,and the formation of a green and coordinated economic system.