Taxation and Enterprise Innovation: Evidence from China’s Value-Added Tax Reform

This article used China as an example to study how tax reform affects the innovative behavior of companies. Our research showed that value-added tax (VAT) reform can affect corporate innovation behavior. On the basis of patent-application data of Chinese enterprises, we used the difference-in-differences framework to study the differences in the performance of Chinese industrial enterprises in patent applications before and after China’s 2009 VAT reform. We demonstrated that China’s VAT reform had a positive impact on corporate innovation; this conclusion is robust. In subsequent research, we demonstrated that the VAT reform promoted corporate innovation by expanding corporate investment in fixed assets and reducing corporate debt ratios; however, due to the Chinese government’s subsidies to corporations and financing constraints, the pecking-order effect of corporate innovation was increased. In addition, the VAT reform had a greater impact on the innovation of export enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises. This research provided insights for emerging countries into formulating innovation-driven sustainable development tax reduction policies.

Analysis on the Influence of "Replacement of Business Tax by Value-added Tax" on the Cost of Highway Projects

The "Replacement of Business Tax by VAT reform" (hereby refer to as "VAT reform" for short) is a newly promulgated and implemented tax policy, and its impact on various industries in China is very different, and the highway project industry is no exception. The implementation of the "VAT reform" will not only have a positive impact on the cost of highway projects, but will also have some negative impacts. For this reason, highway project construction corporates must actively respond. The author explores and analyzes the positive and negative effects of the "VAT reform" on the cost of highway projects, and proposes a reform strategy for highway project cost work under the background of the "VAT reform", in hope of helping with bringing out the intrinsic value of highway project cost management work.

Contesting the Social Contract

This article investigates how Istrian business owners challenged the Croatian government’s motivation for and enforcement of fiskalizacija, an automated VAT reform adopted in 2013 as Croatia prepared for EU membership. Fiskalizacija threatened local economic agency and sowed distrust in government. The analysis of this tax reform demonstrates how Istrians envisage their economic agency, rights, and responsibilities. I argue that it is not just the construction of fiscal systems, but how such a system is projected onto society that is fundamental to the development of state-society relations. The way in which a tax reform is put into effect, including the enforcement practices of state agents, shapes how citizens perceive the social contract to be constituted by fiscal regimes.

VAT reduction and corporate investment – Based on the civil engineering firm

Existing studies have shown that VAT reform stimulates business investment. In this paper, civil engineering firm are taken as samples to study whether the reduction of VAT will stimulate the investment of civil engineering firm by referring to the domestic and foreign literature related to enterprise investment in tax reform.