The Impact Of Environmental Protection Tax Reform On Financing Constraints Of Heavy Polluting Companies

The ’ Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People ’s Republic of China ’,which was formally implemented on January 1,2018,has been developed from the original sewage charges.There are certain differences between the environmental protection tax and the sewage charges in terms of legal status,emission reduction incentives,and collection subjects.It is more standardized and mandatory,and has brought stronger constraints on the pollution behavior of enterprises.Faced with such strict environmental regulation tools,heavily polluting enterprises will re-make decisions to cope with changes in the external environment.Changes in corporate behavior will further cause changes in the financing environment and will have an impact on financing constraints.This paper mainly discusses the impact of environmental protection tax reform on the financing constraints of heavily polluting enterprises,reveals its mechanism,and studies the differences in policy effects under heterogeneous conditions.This paper first reviews the relevant literature on environmental protection tax and corporate financing constraints,summarizes the measurement and influencing factors of corporate financing constraints,and studies the policy effects of environmental protection tax at home and abroad.Secondly,based on signal theory,stakeholder theory,social responsibility theory and green finance theory,this paper puts forward the relevant assumptions of the impact of environmental protection fee reform tax on the financing constraints of heavy polluting enterprises and the specific impact mechanism;thirdly,this paper selects 13974 samples of A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2021,uses the propensity score matching-difference-in-difference model to verify the previous hypothesis,and conducts heterogeneity analysis.At the same time,it also further studies the impact of environmental protection fee tax on the financing availability and financing cost of heavily polluting enterprises.Based on the research and analysis,the following conclusions are drawn :(1)The reform of environmental protection fee to tax significantly reduces the degree of financing constraints of heavily polluting enterprises,and the results remain robust after placebo test,change of propensity score matching ratio and change of explanatory variable measurement index;(2)the environmental protection fee to tax has significantly alleviated the financing constraints of heavily polluting enterprises through the mechanism of signal transmission;(3)the mitigation effect of environmental protection fee-to-tax on financing constraints has the heterogeneity of regional financial development,corporate environmental information disclosure and corporate market attention.The specific performance is as follows : in enterprises with high regional financial development,disclosure of environmental information and high market attention,this effect is more obvious;(4)the further analysis of financing constraints from the perspectives of financing availability and financing cost shows that the reform of environmental protection fees to taxes is indeed conducive to improving the financing availability of heavily polluting enterprises and reducing their financing costs.Finally,according to the above conclusions,this paper puts forward three implications :(1)To better play the internal constraints and positive incentives of environmental protection tax;(2)heavy polluting enterprises should raise awareness and fulfill their tax obligations,and should take the initiative to carry out strategic changes and actively layout green transformation;(3)to improve the environmental information disclosure system,improve the level and quality of corporate environmental information disclosure.