Effects Of Digital Transformation On Corporate Tax Burden

With the development of the economy and society,the integration of the digital and real economy is accelerating.The realization of digital transformation in manufacturing industry is an requirement for its high-quality development.Since 2014,enterprises in line with the"Evaluation Standards for the Integration of Informatization and Industrialization" have been rated as pilot enterprises,promoting the digital transformation of traditional manufacturing industry.Although the research for the impact of digital transformation has been very extensive,the impact on enterprise tax burden is still rare.Whether manufacturing enterprises can reduce the tax burden under the new development mode is still unsolved.Based on this,this paper explores the impact of digital transformation of manufacturing industry on its tax burden and mediating mechanism.Firstly,this paper reviews the existing literature,combines dynamic capability theory and effective tax planning theory,and proposes the following hypotheses:digital transformation reduces tax burden;Digital transformation reduces tax burden by increasing R&D input,government subsidy income and the level of debt financing.Secondly,A-share listed manufacturing corporations from 2011 to 2020 are selected as the research sample.Statistical analysis is carried out based on the definition of the core variables,and the scatterplot is used to preliminarily find that the digital transformation reduces the tax burden of enterprises.In addition,taking the Integration of Industrialization and Informatization Pilot Program as the quasi-natural experimennt,this paper builds a Staggered DID model to investigate the influence of digital transformation on corporate tax burden,the results show that the digital transformation reduces the corporate tax burden.This conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests such as endogeneity test,substitution of core variables,exclusion of interference from other policies,diagnosis and estimation of"bad control group",and placebo test.Thirdly,the endogenous mediating effect model is used to test the mediating mechanism,and it is confirmed that the enterprise’s R&D input,government subsidy and debt financing play mediating roles.The heterogeneity test further shows that the digital transformation has more significant effects on the reduction of corporate tax burden in enterprises of higher ownership concentration and in regions with better external innovation environment.In addition,it is also found that the digital transformation of enterprises doesn’t increase their total tax expenditure when reducing tax burden,indicating that the digital transformation has not achieved a win-win situation of reducing tax burden and increasing government revenue.It is proved that the government tax competition promotes the reduction of the government revenue,while the government supervision intensity helps increase the government revenue.Finally,the paper summarizes the main conclusions and puts forward policy suggestions from the perspectives of the government and enterprises in order to promote the digital transformation of Chinese manufacturing industry.