As China has entered a new era of high-quality development, it has focused on optimizing and upgrading the economic structure, enhancing innovation capabilities, and ensuring the sustainable development of environmental resources. The high-quality development of China's economy and green innovation by enterprises are the core driving forces, and reasonable guidance of government policies is also essential. Green innovation in enterprises cannot do without the support and guidance of fiscal and tax policies. The impact of fiscal and tax policies and institutional adjustments will continue to be transmitted to other areas at the macro level. The macro level of tax burden and the pattern of tax power allocation will have a linkage effect on the industrial system, economic growth, and other aspects, causing greater waves in economic and social development. The government systems of countries around the world are generally composed of several levels, and fiscal and tax policies can come from different levels of government. The important goal of the central government is to achieve coordinated economic development among various regions through the rational allocation of financial power, ultimately promoting the healthy and sustainable development of the entire national economy. Therefore, the financial relationship between governments, especially between the central government and local governments, has always been an important topic of high concern for government departments and research fields.
At present, most of the existing literature studies the impact of government behavior on corporate innovation from the perspectives of tax burden, fiscal decentralization, or intergovernmental competition. Value-added tax is currently the largest tax in China, and a series of reforms aimed at value-added tax are the top priority of China's financial system reform. According to the relevant theories and research results of fiscal decentralization, the tax sharing incentives generated by the value-added tax sharing reform will affect local government behavior and corporate strategic choices, ultimately improving the green innovation performance of enterprises. So, has China's value-added tax sharing reform, which began in 2016, played an important role in improving the performance of green innovation in enterprises? What are its mechanisms and influencing factors? What measures do central and local governments need to take to make the value-added tax sharing reform play its due role in green innovation? These issues are worth conducting empirical data analysis and exploration under the guidance of theories and research results related to fiscal decentralization.
Therefore,this study attempts to explore the impact of tax sharing on the green innovation performance of enterprises from the perspective of value-added tax. The reasonable allocation of fiscal power can motivate local governments and enterprises to improve green innovation performance, and promote the smooth transformation and upgrading of the entire national economy. The value-added tax sharing reform, as an important measure of China's fiscal decentralization reform, is bound to have an impact on the green innovation performance of enterprises. In order to verify this conclusion and analyze its mechanism and influencing factors, this study conducts empirical analysis using data from listed companies in manufacturing from 2012 to 2021 and the intensity DID model. The results show that (1) the value-added tax sharing reform has significantly improved the green innovation performance of enterprises; (2) the competition of local government fiscal expenditure and the level of corporate credit play an important intermediary role in it; and (3) the institutional environment plays a significant positive moderating role. Heterogeneity analysis confirms that the reform of value-added tax sharing has a more significant impact on the eastern region and state-owned enterprises.
With fiscal expenditure competition and corporate credit level as mediating variables and the institutional environment as moderating variables, this study analyzes tax sharing and corporate green innovation performance within the same research framework. The marginal contribution of this article mainly lies in the exploration of the improvement path of the green innovation performance of enterprises from the perspective of value-added tax sharing reform by using microdata and empirical methods to empirically test the mechanism and environment of action. This provides empirical evidence and ideas for optimizing fiscal decentralization reform, effectively stimulating the vitality of green innovation in enterprises, and promoting economic transformation and upgrading.