The Impact Of "Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ" On Enterprise Investment Efficiency

Since the new century,China ’s tax authorities has realized that informatization is bound to have a tremendous impact on tax collection and management,and started to increase the informatization investment.In March 2021,the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued "Opinions on Further Deepening the Reform of Tax Collection and Management",proposing to "deepen the reform of the tax collection and management system" and “build a smart tax driven by tax big data in taxation".In fact,China has long begun to explore the establishment of a modern tax collection and management system and has successively launched systems such as "Golden Tax Phase Ⅰ","Golden Tax Phase Ⅱ" and "Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ" to accelerate the reform of tax collection and management information.Different from the "Golden Tax Phase Ⅰ",the "Golden Tax Phase Ⅱ",the "Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ" expands the coverage of tax collection and management from a single VAT tax to all taxes,achieves data sharing between departments,and help tax authorities to improves the ability of data analysis and risk prediction.It is not only one of the most representative events in China to strengthen tax collection and management by using big data technology,but also one of the major measures of the reform of tax collection and management system.The "Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ" has achieved the goals witch can be summarized in "one platform,two-level processing,three coverage,and four types of systems".What’s more,it also means a further step toward the grand goal--unifying national tax law enforcement,real-time monitoring of tax data,optimizing tax services,and improving the quality and efficiency of tax collection.In a word,it has made a profound impact on the tax collection and management of tax authorities and the enterprises’ daily management.The information reform of tax collection and management has greatly improved the collection and management ability of tax authorities.At the same time,the speed of China’s economic development is gradually slowing down,which increases lot pressure on enterprise investment.Although the “tax reduction” policy has been continuously implemented,corporates’ tax burden has not been significantly reduced.At the same time,there’re various investment efficiency losses which hinder the sustainable development of enterprises.Under “the new normal” background,the work of tax collection and management should not only adapt to “the new normal”,but also Play an active role in regulating national economy and resources allocation,which make a higher request for work of tax collection and management.So,will the improvement of tax collection and management ability affect corporate investment behavior?As the main force of investment activities,the enterprises’ investment behavior is not only important for their daily business activities and sustainable development,but also related to the country’s economic development.However,although there has not been lack of attention to tax collection and management and corporate behavior,the indicators,measuring the intensity of tax collection and management,are not ideal.The few studies on the impact of tax collection and administration on corporate investment are not consistent and reliable enough due to potential endogenous problems and effective identification problems.Fortunately,the “Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ” provides a quasi-natural experiment for the study.It was first piloted in three provinces in 2013,and gradually launched nationwide in 2014-2016.This temporally staggered quasi-natural experimental environment creates a relatively exogenous research scenario for this study.And in the study of enterprise investment behavior,the resource allocation efficiency represented by investment efficiency is also an aspect that everyone pays more attention to.Above all,taking the investment efficiency of enterprises as the starting point and the step-by-step implementation of the “Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ” as an opportunity,we use the data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019,basing on principal-agent theory and financing constraint theory,to build a difference-in-difference model,so that we examine the impact of tax enforcement on corporate investment efficiency.The results show that the improvement of tax collection and management ability brought by the“Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ” makes enterprise investment more efficient,and the above effects are mainly reflected in non-state-owned,large-scale,jurisdiction of local tax authorities or enterprises with low product market competition in the region.What’s more,“Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ” significantly alleviates corporate financing constraints and reduces agency costs,which means that financing constraints mitigation and agency costs reduction may be the internal mechanism of “Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ” affecting corporate investment efficiency.In order to avoid the measurement bias of core variables,eliminate the contingency of empirical results and the endogenous interference,this paper conducts a series of robustness tests,including core indicator substitution,placebo test and propensity score matching.The results show that the conclusions of this paper are robust and reliable.In addition,in order to exclude the "VAT reform" policy in the same period and other policies in various regions and industries,this paper controls the relevant variables,the conclusion is still robust.Also,this paper analyzes the heterogeneity from four aspects--the equity,the scale,the tax administration of enterprise,and the intensity of the product market competition.The empirical results show that the “Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ” made a stronger impact on the non-state-owned enterprises,the large-scale enterprises,the enterprises responsible for the main collection and management by the local tax authorities,and the enterprises with low competition in the industry.This paper also analyzed the possible reasons.The research in this paper provides incremental empirical evidence for evaluating the digital tax collection and management work and the implementation effect of the “Golden Tax Phase Ⅲ”.Based on the empirical research,this paper also puts forward relevant policy recommendations.