税收征管数字化升级与上市公司所得税费用偏差

Abstract

Irregularities in corporate income tax have consistently garnered significant attention within scholarly and professional circles. Given the inherent malleability and concealed nature of corporate income tax, in contrast to the self-regulating attributes of value-added tax, it demonstrates a greater propensity for manipulation. Consequently, financial indices derived from corporate income tax serve as crucial sources of information when scrutinizing such irregularities. The examination of these indicators proves to be of paramount importance as a means for identifying, monitoring, and mitigating instances of corporate tax evasion. Based on the data of Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2016, which are sourced from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) Database and the National Tax Survey Database, this paper constructs an indicator of corporate income tax expense deviation to quantitatively measure the degree of corporate income tax non-compliance. Taking the phased and staggered implementation of the Golden Tax III project as a quasi-natural experimental scenario, this study adopts the staggered difference-in-differences (DID) method to systematically examine the causal impact of tax enforcement digitization on corporate income tax expense deviation. The empirical findings demonstrate that tax enforcement digitization triggered by the launch of the Golden Tax III project has significantly reduced corporate income tax expense deviation, which fully indicates that the enhanced capability of tax authorities in supervising and monitoring tax-related information can effectively constrain irregularities in corporate income tax and exert a remarkable inhibitory effect on corporate tax avoidance activities. Validity tests of the staggered DID model reveal that the results of the parallel trend assumption test, placebo tests, and Goodman-Bacon decomposition all strongly corroborate the validity and rationality of the model specification in this paper. Considering potential endogeneity concerns such as omitted variable bias and sample selection bias that may interfere with the estimation results, this study further adopts a series of remedial measures, including adding more control variables, employing the Heckman two-step estimation method, and utilizing the instrumental variable approach, to verify the reliability and robustness of the baseline regression conclusions. Additionally, after conducting a battery of robustness checks involving replacing the dependent variable, adjusting the research sample scope, altering the DID estimation strategy, and applying the propensity score matching combined with DID (PSM-DID) method, the core conclusions of this paper remain valid and unchanged. Mechanism tests further uncover two critical impact channels: on the one hand, tax enforcement digitization can suppress corporate earnings management behaviors, thereby directly reducing the level of income tax expense deviation; on the other hand, such digitization can effectively improve the quality of enterprises' internal control systems, which in turn curbs corporate income tax avoidance practices. This paper also conducts heterogeneity analysis based on the differences in tax authorities' law enforcement capacity, corporate governance quality, and the degree of tax authority attention, and finds that the inhibitory effect of tax enforcement digitization on corporate income tax expense deviation is more pronounced for enterprises whose income tax is collected by national tax bureaus, those with weaker corporate governance structures, and those subject to lower tax authority attention. The above research conclusions not only help deepen the re-recognition of corporate income tax non-compliance issues in China, but also provide strong empirical support for accelerating the construction of digital government, modernizing China's tax administration system, and further modernizing the government's capacity for governance. Moreover, they carry crucial practical reference significance for driving high-quality economic development by building a fair and standardized tax burden environment, implementing tax and fee reduction incentives, and stimulating market vitality.