摘要
分税制以来,中国各级政府间的财政收入权、税收征管权都呈现逐级上移的特征,这势必会弱化地方政府的财政自主权和经济建设职能。本文利用撤县设区改革,研究了收入和支出端的财政职权对县级政府征税努力和企业实际税负的影响。研究发现:第一,撤县设区改革降低了县级政府财政自主权,新设区的财政收支明显下降,而市本级的财政收支则显著上升。第二,撤县设区弱化了县级政府征税努力,显著降低了企业的实际税率,不过仅限于区县政府管辖范围内的企业所得税,对国税局管理的增值税和2002年之后新企业的所得税没有影响。第三,撤县设区有助于扩大企业销售产值和利润总额,并促进地区经济增长。本文的研究表明,在分税制框架下要实现企业的实质性减税,需要通过财政收支权力的同步调整来降低地方财政压力,形成事权与支出责任相匹配的政府间财政关系。
China's tax sharing reform requires the formation of intergovernmental fiscal relations that match governmental authorities with financial rights.It also motivates local governments through fiscal and economic decentralization,promoting the rapid growth of China's economy and fiscal revenue.However,the implementation of the tax sharing reform has gradually changed the fiscal relationship between the central and local governments,creating asymmetrical relations between the collection of financial rights and the resolution of matters.The imbalance in fiscal revenue and expenditure responsibilities has led to greater fiscal pressure on local governments.Facing a number of problems,such as land financial dependence,local debt,and fiscal expenditure bias,local governments have resisted the central government's policy of reducing enterprises'taxes.Recently,the establishment of intergovernmental fiscal relations that match decision-making power with financial power have become an important part of China's modern fiscal system reform.Centralizing fiscal revenues and reducing the responsibility of local governments for administrative expenditures has changed governments'fiscal behavior.This paper uses the reforms of China's city-county merger in the 1998 to 2007 period to study local governments'taxation efforts after their fiscal revenue and expenditure responsibilities were weakened simultaneously.First,we conduct a detailed analysis of the policy background and institutional characteristics of the city-county merger reform in China.As one of most important county-level administrative division reforms since the 1990s,about 10%of China's counties were changed to districts between 1994 and 2015,including more than 45%of prefecture-level cities in China.We find that the reform has an important institutional feature:it reduces economic construction functions and expenditure responsibilities of county governments in the process of transferring the financial power from county to city governments.It entails the simultaneous centralization of fiscal revenues and expenditurse.We then construct a theoretical model to show how fiscal responsibilities affect local governments'tax efforts,revealing the inherent logic of local governments'easing of tax collection in the context of declining revenue control and expenditure responsibility.Finally,we match county data and Chinese industrial enterprise databases from the 1998 to 2007 period,and use the difference-in-difference method to investigate the impact of the city-county merger reform on actual tax burden of enterprises.We find that the city-county merger reform significantly reduces the actual corporate income tax rate but no significant effect on the actual VAT rate.The impact of the reform on corporate income tax is closely related to the tax intervention power of local governments.The enterprises managed by IRS are not affected,and the strongest effect is on the enterprises belonging to the county government and smaller businesses.Second,the reform reduces the income tax income of county governments,weakening their fiscal revenue and expenditure capacities,especially the capital expenditure of county governments.However,the reform increases the fiscal revenue and expenditures of the prefectural cities,effectively transfering financial and economic power from the county to the city.Third,the reform increases the sales output value and the total profit of enterprises,and promotes the growth of per-capita GDP by reducing the actual tax rate of enterprises.Finally,after conducting a parallel trend test using balanced panel data,reducing the sample size of the control group,and excluding other county-level administrative division reform policies,the basic conclusions of the main analyses remain valid.In the current context of China's tax and fee reductions,the policy implications of this paper are that during the simultaneous adjustment of financial rights and matters,it is possible to effectively change the tax incentives of local governments so that they promote economic growth and reduce the corporate tax burden.
作者
范子英
赵仁杰
FAN Ziying;ZHAO Renjie(School of Public Economics and Administration,Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
出处
《经济研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2020年第4期101-117,共17页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家社会科学基金重大招标项目(19ZDA076)
国家自然科学基金资助项目(71973088,71573165)
上海财经大学创新团队支持计划
上海市教育发展基金会“曙光计划”
上海财经大学研究生自主创新项目(2018110667)的资助。
关键词
财政职权
征税努力
企业税负
撤县设区
Fiscal Responsibilities
Tax Efforts
Corporate Tax Burden
City-county Merger Reform
