Environmental Uncertainty,Tax Avoidance And Inefficient Investments

Under the actual situation that China’s economy has changed from high-speed development to high-quality development,the industrial structure is unreasonable,and the follow-up momentum of private investment is insufficient,the issue of enterprise investment efficiency has always been the focus of attention of all parties in society.At the same time,in China,the tax amount of enterprises accounts for a large proportion of their profits,the tax burden of enterprises is large,coupled with some ambiguity and lack of rigor in the current tax law system,all give enterprises the opportunity to actively avoid tax,which leads to the more common tax avoidance problems in China.The "tax avoidance agency view" that has emerged in recent years believes that the implementation of tax avoidance will make the information asymmetry and entrusted agency problems of enterprises more serious,which may lead to inefficient investment.At the same time,the external environment faced by enterprises today is in a process of constant change and the relationship between all parties is very complex,and the tax avoidance and investment behavior of enterprises are carried out in a certain environment,so they are easily affected by the external environment.Therefore,this paper hopes to explore the impact of tax avoidance on the investment efficiency of enterprises under the actual situation of environmental uncertainty,and how environmental uncertainty specifically affects the relationship between the two.By combing through relevant literature at home and abroad,this paper puts forward research hypotheses based on agent theory,information asymmetry theory,and contingency theory.On this basis,taking the data of all A-share listed companies in China from 2016 to 2020 as a research sample,the relationship between tax avoidance and inefficient investment,and the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the two,are empirically tested.The following conclusions are mainly obtained:(1)From the perspective of the whole sample data,tax avoidance is significantly positively correlated with inefficient investment,and the greater the degree of corporate tax avoidance,the higher the overall level of inefficient investment.(2)Considering the impact of environmental uncertainty,it is found that environmental uncertainty can inhibit the negative impact of tax avoidance on the investment efficiency of enterprises.(3)The mechanism test finds that agency costs play a mediating role between tax avoidance and inefficient investment.That is,tax avoidance harms investment efficiency by increasing agency costs.(4)Further research finds that tax avoidance is not positively correlated with both types of inefficient investment,and its impact on investment efficiency mainly leads to overinvestment rather than underinvestment;On this basis,after considering the nature of enterprise property rights,it is found that tax avoidance will only lead to overinvestment in state-owned enterprises,while tax avoidance in non-state-owned enterprises may lead to both overinvestment and alleviate underinvestment,and after considering the impact of environmental uncertainty,environmental uncertainty will inhibit the positive correlation between tax avoidance and overinvestment in non-state-owned enterprises.On the one hand,the research in this paper enriches the relevant research on the economic consequences of corporate tax avoidance and the influencing factors of corporate investment efficiency,and provides empirical data for exploring the influence mechanism of macro environment on enterprise decision-making behavior.On the other hand,it also provides some suggestions for enterprises to fully understand the two sides of implementing tax avoidance strategies,make financial decisions in an uncertain environment,and improve tax supervision and management by government departments.