Implementation Of The Environmental Protection Tax Law,Information Transparency And SG&A Costs Stickiness

SG&A costs stickiness is a research hotspot in the field of management accounting,which has an important impact on cost control and operation efficiency.According to the traditional constitutive theory,cost increases and decreases symmetrically with the increase and decrease of sales volume.However,the actual change is asymmetrical.When the quantity of sale increases,the increase of the cost outweigh the decrease of the cost when the quantity of sale decreases,resulting in the phenomenon of SG&A costs stickiness.Since the government has emphasized reducing the cost of real enterprises,many scholars have paid more attention to the expense stickiness,which has continuously expanded the research on the factors affecting the SG&A costs stickiness.After the taxation reform from effluent fees to environmental protection tax,the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law has had a number of impacts on businesses at the micro level.For example,rigid law enforcement and the increase of tax rate promote enterprises’ green transformation,the increase of pollutant discharge cost forces enterprises to increase the intensity of environmental protection investment,and environmental protection research and development cannot effectively transform the results in the short term,thus affecting enterprise performance.The environmental regulation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law will cause the effect of resource reallocation,and exert both constraints and incentives on enterprises,which will have an impact on the cost management of enterprises.Therefore,the research on whether the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law will enhance the expense stickiness is of certain theoretical and practical significance.Based on Porter’s hypothesis,principal-agent theory and free cash flow theory,this paper includes the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law,information transparency and enterprise SG&A costs stickiness into the same research category.The data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2015 to2021 are selected as research samples to study the policy effects of the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law.In this paper,the ABJ model is used to measure the cost stickiness,and the difference difference method is used to empirically test the impact of the implementation of Environmental Protection Tax Law on the cost stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises.The samples were grouped according to the median of information transparency industry and year,and the moderating effect of information transparency on the implementation of Environmental Protection Tax Law and the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises was empirically studied.From the perspective of agency cost and green innovation,this paper studies the effect mechanism of the implementation of Environmental Protection Tax Law on the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises.Based on the characteristics of economic development level,institutional environment and geographical environment in different regions,this paper empirically studies the implementation of Environmental Protection Tax Law on the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises.The results show that:(1)the implementation of Environmental Protection Tax Law can enhance the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises;(2)Compared with the group with high information transparency,low information transparency will intensify the effect of the implementation of Environmental Protection Tax Law on the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises,in other words,improving information transparency can weaken the negative impact of the implementation of Environmental Protection Tax Law on the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises;(3)The implementation of Environmental Protection Tax Law increases the cost stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises by increasing agency costs and encouraging enterprises to carry out green innovation activities;(4)Compared with the eastern and western regions,due to the low ecological efficiency in the central region,the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law has a more significant effect on the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises.The research in this paper can enrich the theoretical research on factors affecting the expense stickiness,clarify the relationship between the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law and the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises,reveal the action mechanism of the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law affecting the expense stickiness of heavy polluting enterprises,and provide a theoretical explanation that improving information transparency can weaken the negative influence of the relationship between them.It also provides empirical evidence for accurately evaluating the effect of the environmental protection tax law policy on the cost adjustment behavior of enterprises and for enterprises to improve the cost management to achieve a win-win situation of environmental protection and management benefits.