Research On The Impact Of Environmental Protection "Fee To Tax" On Green Innovation Of Enterprises

The change of environmental protection fees to taxes is a milestone event in the development of environmental taxation in China,providing a strong impetus for building a green and sustainable society,promoting ecological civilisation,winning the battle against pollution,and achieving the ambitious goals of "carbon peaking" and "carbon neutrality".It provides a strong impetus to achieve the ambitious goals of "carbon peaking" and "carbon neutral".Incentivising enterprises to innovate green is one of the important paths for environmental protection tax to achieve environmental protection.Environmental protection tax has a stronger binding and incentive effect compared to emission charges,which may raise the cost of emissions for enterprises and stimulate their initiative and enthusiasm for green innovation.The key to whether the central government’s green development concept can effectively promote green innovation among enterprises lies in how enterprises,as the main body of the market,and local governments,as the main body of supervision,respond in the face of the central government’s environmental protection policies.This paper empirically investigates the impact of the "tax reform" policy on the green innovation of listed enterprises in the heavy polluting industry from the perspective of tax and fee differences.The heterogeneity analysis found that this effect was more significant among non-state enterprises and large-scale enterprises.This effect was found to be more pronounced among non-state owned enterprises and large scale enterprises.Further classification of green patents revealed that the change in environmental fees and taxes mainly stimulated innovation in waste management and transportation.By examining the impact mechanism,it is verified that the effect of the tax change on environmental protection is mainly through raising the cost of emissions and increasing the rigidity of enforcement,which increases the constraints on listed enterprises in heavily polluting industries.The empirical results indicate that the "fee-to-tax" policy,marked by the introduction of the Environmental Protection Tax Law,has been effective in reducing energy consumption and emissions in heavily polluting enterprises,but there is still a long way to go to improve the environmental protection tax system.