摘要
为盘活企业增值税留抵税额造成的沉淀资金,2018年国家开始实施有条件的留抵退税。本文利用沪深A股上市公司年度财务数据,以增值税留抵退税为准自然实验,运用扩展的现金-现金流敏感性模型,实证检验了增值税留抵退税对企业融资约束的影响效应及作用机制。研究发现,增值税留抵退税可以显著降低样本企业的现金-现金流敏感性,即留抵退税可以有效缓解企业融资约束。机制分析显示,增值税留抵退税主要通过增加企业内源融资、短期负债、商业信用等渠道促进了企业融资约束的缓解,且留抵退税对不同类型企业的融资约束缓解效应存在显著的异质性。此外,留抵退税在同时促进内源融资和短期债务融资增加的情况下,由于内源融资的增长幅度大于债务融资的增长幅度,使企业财务风险降低。本文实证结果为政府部门推行减税降费、实施税收优惠政策激活企业活力等提供了一定的实证依据。
In order to revitalize the precipitation funds caused by enterprises’ tax retention, China began to implement the conditional VAT retention tax rebate in 2018. This paper empirically tests the effect and mechanism of VAT retention tax rebate on financial constraints of enterprises using the extended cash-cash flow sensitivity model based on the quasi experiment of the VAT retention tax rebate and financial data of A-share listed companies. It is found that VAT retention tax rebate can significantly reduce the cash-cash flow sensitivity of all sample enterprises;in other words, it can significantly alleviate financial constraints of enterprises. The mechanism analysis shows that the VAT retention tax rebate mainly promotes the mitigation of enterprises financial constraints by increasing internal financing, short-term debt, commercial credit, and there is a significant heterogeneity on different types of enterprises. In addition, in the case of simultaneously promoting the increase of internal financing and short-term debt, because internal financing outgrows debt financing, the financial risk of enterprises is reduced. Conclusions of this paper provide some empirical basis for the government to implement tax and fee cuts and tax preferential policies to stimulate the vitality of enterprises.Chinese VAT system calculates the current tax payable with purchasing tax-deducting method. When the current output tax is less than the current input tax, it will form the VAT credit, and the part of insufficient deduction needs to be carried forward to the next period of deduction. Although the VAT credit can be deducted in a certain tax period in the future, some of it may not be deducted in time and funds are occupied for enterprises with a large input tax. Enterprise funds occupied by VAT credit will not only increase the capital cost and limit the cash flow, but also restrict the timely implementation of their normal business decisions. In order to solve the problem of funds occupied by input tax caused by enterprises’ equipment procurement, in 2018 China implemented the VAT retention tax rebate for eighteen major categories of industries, including advanced manufacturing and modern service industry. In order to further promote the substantial reduction of VAT, the industry restrictions were removed in 2019, and the policy applies to all eligible taxpayers.The universal implementation of VAT retention tax rebate not only is aligned with international practice, but also gives taxpayers the right to request tax refund of VAT credit. To a certain extent, it can effectively alleviate the shortage of taxpayer funds, speed up the capital flow of enterprises, and reduce the burden of capital occupied by input tax credit. The increase in “disposable funds” due to VAT retention tax rebate will expand the scale of internal financing and effectively reduce financing costs of enterprises. With sufficient funds, enterprises can expand their market share by increasing capital investment, and enhance product competitiveness by strengthening research and development efforts.By reviewing the literature, it is found that the VAT retention tax rebate was only targeted at a few specific enterprises or industries, and the scope and intensity of policy implementation were small. Therefore, most studies were conducted on the impact of VAT credits on enterprises’ cash flow from the perspective of theory or simple data statistics, without deeply exploring the impact mechanism and effect. However, the above literature review provides ideas and directions for the research of this paper. The marginal contribution of this paper mainly includes the following two aspects. First, by introducing the model of “extended cash-cash flow sensitivity, ” this paper empirically tests the effect of VAT retention tax rebate from the perspective of financial constraints, in order to make up for the lack of literature in this field and provide a reference for other scholars to conduct in-depth research. Second, from the perspective of internal and external financing, this paper deeply explores how the VAT retention tax rebate affects financial constraints and provides reference for the formulation and implementation of tax reduction policies.As a tax reduction policy, the VAT retention tax rebate affects the financial constraints of enterprises in two ways.First, “government endorsement” can alleviate the financial constraints by alleviating the information asymmetry of enterprises. On the one hand, the VAT retention tax rebate requires that the tax-paying enterprises must have a credit rating of A or B. As the “endorsement” of government for enterprises, the tax-paying credit rating is the “reward” given by government when taxes are paid in integrity. Honest tax payment can not only improve the commercial credit financing level of enterprises, but also improve the scale of credit financing, so as to effectively alleviate financial constraints. On the other hand, the VAT retention tax rebate releases the market signal of increasing the cash flow and eliminates information asymmetry, which will change the bargaining power of capital supply and demand of both parties for capital demand. The expected increase in cash flow due to the VAT retention tax rebate will inevitably reduce the “price” of capital supply. Enterprises can not only obtain “cheaper” funds, but also obtain more external financing even under the original solvency of enterprises.Second, the VAT retention tax rebate can directly increase the “disposable” cash of enterprises to alleviate their financial constraints. It has changed the way insufficient deduction of input tax is carried forward. Enterprises no longer need to pre-pay VAT tax retention to the government, but the government will directly return the insufficient deduction to the enterprise, so the most direct effect is the increase in the disposable cash flow for enterprises. This not only provides a source of funds for enterprises to carry out internal financing, but also reduces the cost of capital of enterprises since they can obtain more funds under the same conditions. This policy plays a dual role in easing financial constraints.In the empirical test, this paper takes the enterprises that have implemented the VAT retention tax rebate as the treatment group and others as the control group, and adopts the Differences-in-Differences method to separate out the pure effect on financial constraints of treatment group. Due to the particularity of power grid enterprises, their data was deleted. Therefore, the treatment group is divided into four groups by category, namely, manufacturing, information transmission and other services, scientific research and technology services, and environmental and public facilities management.This paper refers to the research method of Almeida et al.(2005) which measures financial constraints with cash-cash flow sensitivity, and regards the variable level of enterprise cash holdings as the explained variable. The operating cash flow(Cf) and the reform variables of VAT retention tax rebate(including group variable and policy reform dummy variable) were taken as explanatory variables.The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of VAT retention tax rebate in 2018 on financial constraints using the Differences-in-Differences method. In order to eliminate its possible impact on specific enterprises and industries before 2018, the sample excluded the enterprises that had implemented the VAT retention tax rebate before 2018 and selected samples as annual financial data of A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2021. The data was from CSMAR and RESSET Financial Research Database.The study shows that the VAT retention tax rebate can significantly reduce the cash-cash flow sensitivity of enterprises, meaning it can effectively alleviate the financial constraints of enterprises. The results of the influence mechanism analysis show that the VAT retention tax rebate can ease financial constraints mainly by increasing internal financing, short-term debt, commercial credit and so on. There is significant heterogeneity in the alleviating effect on financial constraints for different types of enterprises. The alleviating effect is greater on private enterprises, advanced manufacturing industry, public facilities management industry, enterprises with low profitability, enterprises with high financial constraints and enterprises with a high tax burden.The policy implications of this paper include the following four aspects.(1) The “short-term” characteristics of internal financing, short-term debt and commercial credit indicate the short-term effect of VAT retention tax rebate, so the effect of this policy is insufficient. Therefore, faced with increasing economic downward pressure in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we should explore a preferential tax policy with long-term effects to stimulate the vitality of enterprises.(2) We should actively explore preferential tax policies matching with the VAT retention tax rebate to make up for the insufficient scope of this policy and really give full play to the advantages of “combined preferential tax policies.”(3) We should actively explore and gradually promote the mixed-ownership reform. In view of the sufficient funds of state-owned enterprises, it is suggested to encourage state-owned enterprises to help solve the financial difficulties of private enterprises through appropriate investment or equity participation and so on. It can improve the efficiency and return of SOE, and also accumulate experience for promoting the mixed-ownership reform.(4) In the case of increasing internal financing and short-term debt financing at the same time, the VAT retention tax rebate can reduce the financial risk of enterprises. Therefore, enterprises should reasonably arrange their own debt scale, and take effective measures to deal with the possible increase in financial risk after the effect of VAT retention tax rebate fades.
作者
岳树民
肖春明
YUE Shumin;XIAO Chunming(Renmin University of China,100872;Shanxi University of Finance and Economics,030006)
出处
《财贸经济》
CSSCI
北大核心
2023年第1期51-67,共17页
Finance & Trade Economics
基金
国家社会科学基金重点项目“新发展阶段财税体制促进高质量发展研究”(22AZD017)。
关键词
增值税
留抵退税
融资约束
现金-现金流敏感性
VAT
Retention Tax Rebate
Financial Constraints
Cash-Cash Flow Sensitivity
