Moving forward steadily and starting a new bureau The government has reduced the burden for many years. Why do some companies still feel cost pressure?

How to cut taxes and fees in the future

  Cost reduction starts with risk prevention.

Policy measures cannot only target physical element costs, but should focus on reducing overall risk.

  For Chinese entrepreneurs, 2016 was a year to remember.

At that time, there was a heated debate on the "death tax rate" in the public opinion field. The glass king Cao Dewang's remarks that "China's manufacturing tax burden is 35% higher than that of the United States" pushed the discussion to a peak.

By the end of the year, the voice of private tax cuts has reached its peak.

  What happened next is well known: China officially kicked off a large-scale tax and fee reduction in 2016, which has become the "top priority" of the current government.

In the past six years, the cumulative tax reduction and fee reduction exceeded 8.6 trillion yuan, and my country's macro tax burden dropped from 18.7% in 2012 to about 15.2% in 2021.

  More detailed changes are reflected in a report by the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences.

Since 2016, the Academy of Financial Sciences has carried out an enterprise cost survey every year. The "2021 Enterprise Cost Survey Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released this year shows that in recent years, the overall tax burden of enterprises has been declining. From 2018 to 2020 The proportion of the total annual corporate tax payment in the operating income has been decreasing year by year, with an average annual decrease of 0.87 percentage points. The average tax burden of more than 66% of the sample companies has been lower than 5%.

  Liu Shangxi, president of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, said that the policies of tax and fee reduction in recent years have played an important role in reducing the cost burden of enterprises, especially the policies during the epidemic have effectively hedged the impact of the epidemic on enterprises.

  However, during the research, he also found many questions, such as, "Why is the multiplier effect of tax cuts declining? Tax and fee reductions are getting stronger and stronger, why are some companies still feeling great cost pressures?" Liu Shangxi believes that only by clarifying these problems and guarding against other factors to hedge the effect of active fiscal policy can the effectiveness of the policy be improved.

Cost pressure for businesses comes from uncertainty

  Since the central government proposed to deepen the supply-side structural reform at the end of 2015, as an important part of the "three eliminations, one reduction and one supplement", the central and local governments have introduced a series of cost reduction policies and measures.

Through continuous large-scale tax cuts and fee reductions, the proportion of tax burdens in enterprise costs is not high at present.

In a survey conducted by the Academy of Financial Sciences in 2021, 56.5% of enterprises believed that the "tax and fee burden was reasonable", and 7.9% of the enterprises believed that the tax and fee burden was light.

  Liu Shangxi believes that at present, the real cost pressure of enterprises comes from uncertainty.

According to the "Report", this stems from the high-risk characteristics of the new development stage. Various uncertainties and public risks will be internalized into the cost of enterprises, resulting in rising enterprise costs. The new crown pneumonia epidemic is a typical example.

"Business costs are determined not just by what has already happened, but by possible future losses or risks, and some business costs are increasingly unpredictable."

  During the survey, scholars from the Academy of Financial Sciences found that in a risk society, not only the uncertainty and public risks in various economic and social fields will be internalized into the cost of enterprises, but also the individual risks at the enterprise level will also be externalized. Transmission and transformation will lead to the expansion of public risks and bring about a full range of cost increases, which will put pressure on all enterprises.

  Taking the real estate industry as an example, the debt risks caused by leading companies will cause chain transmission, which will not only damage the related real estate developers, but also bring about changes in investment expectations in the real estate industry.

This change will also increase the risk of financial institutions, implicate local finance, and reduce land transfer fees and related taxes.

  At present, the ideas and measures of cost reduction in academic circles and government departments are mostly based on the cost of physical elements, and are classified according to tax burden, financing cost, institutional cost, labor cost, land and energy cost, and logistics cost.

The "Report" believes that for enterprises, classified management and control may be effective in the short term, but from the perspective of the entire supply chain, the costs and profits of upstream, midstream and downstream enterprises are closely related. is profit.

  In 2021, there will be a complex situation of uneven cost sharing between upstream, midstream and downstream.

For example, rising bulk commodity prices in the upstream push up the cost of raw materials for companies; midstream high-energy-consuming companies have high costs, but there is a time lag in the transmission of costs to downstream companies, and there will be a certain gap with expectations; downstream companies not only face increased procurement costs due to rising raw material prices, It is also faced with the product price transmission part of the increase in the cost of mid- and upstream enterprises, and the profit space has been significantly compressed.

  This complexity can also be seen in the data.

The "Report" shows that in the past three years, the cost per 100 yuan of operating income of enterprises first decreased and then increased, respectively 84.15 yuan, 83.38 yuan and 83.64 yuan, showing a fluctuating trend.

  Liu Shangxi said that cost reduction should start from risk prevention.

In the next step to reduce costs, policy measures should not only focus on the cost of physical elements, but should focus on reducing overall risks.

If cost reduction policies are used to replace corporate cost management, companies will be overly dependent on the government's "gift package".

Therefore, it is necessary to rely on increasing institutional and mechanism reforms to reduce resource misallocation and prevent overall risks; improve the central and local governance mechanisms, especially the reform of fiscal relations, and mobilize the enthusiasm of the two levels of governments to prevent risks; Good Expectation Management".

Preferential tax and fee policies should be institutionalized

  The tax and fee reduction policies that have been going on for many years have reduced the macro tax burden to a lower level while reducing the burden on market entities.

This accordingly brings about pressure on fiscal revenue and expenditure and the issue of sustainable fiscal development in the future.

Many finance and taxation scholars believe that the multiplier effect of tax cuts and fee reductions has diminished marginally, and the effectiveness of policies should be assessed in a timely manner to better cope with the downward pressure on the economy.

  Li Wanfu, editor-in-chief of China Taxation Magazine and former director of the Institute of Taxation Science of the State Administration of Taxation, believes that the important role of the policy of reducing taxes and fees is to promote and improve the relationship between the government and the market, and to give full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation.

  This is manifested in the fact that the amount of social resources occupied by the government through taxes and fees has been reduced, and more social resources have been transferred to the market for allocation; at the same time, the combination of tax reduction and fee reduction combined with the reform of "delegating power, delegating power, regulating services" has further transformed government functions, and the entire business The business environment and the fair market competition environment have been greatly improved; non-tax revenue has been greatly reduced, various non-tax forms of revenue have been collected by tax authorities, and government revenue has become more standardized.

The financial scholar believes that in order to reduce the tax burden of enterprises, stabilize market players, and ease the downward pressure on the economy, "comprehensive measures are needed."

  Zhu Qing, a professor at the School of Finance of Renmin University of China, observed that after the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the fiscal policy hedging measures adopted by most countries were to delay taxes and expand fiscal deficits, and seldom adopted tax cuts and reforms.

"Because tax cuts are generally in response to the economic cycle, use it to smooth the economic cycle, reduce taxes when the economy is bad, and increase taxes when the economy is good."

  Xu Wen, deputy director of the Public Revenue Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, wrote in the book "China's Tax Policy Report (2021-2022)" that future tax and fee reductions should be subject to the needs of improving the tax and fee system, whether reducing taxes or fees. Tax or fee reduction should be a by-product of improving the system, such as the reform of the tax system and social security system, rather than short-term policy measures.

  Xu Wen said that the main purpose of reducing taxes and fees is to reduce the burden on enterprises, increase the cash flow of enterprises, and then increase profits and financial resources, which has a great effect on stabilizing the short-term operation of enterprises.

However, in terms of stabilizing expectations, enterprises are faced with many uncertain factors. They cannot solve the problem only by reducing taxes and fees, and need to make long-term strategic considerations.

  The corresponding problem is that if the government implements the policy of reducing taxes and fees for a long time, it will give market players the expectation that “tax reduction and fee reduction are on the way”, which may lead to companies passively waiting for the policy, which is not conducive to stimulating the endogenous development of enterprises. power.

He suggested that in order to reduce the dependence of enterprises on tax and fee reduction policies, the institutionalization of periodic preferential tax and fee policies should be promoted, and more standardized and institutionalized policy arrangements should be used to ensure a reasonable level of tax and fee burden for enterprises.

  On the premise of maintaining a relatively stable macro tax burden, we will implement tax cuts and fee reductions through institutional and structural tax cuts, so as to build greater certainty when the economy faces "triple pressures".

Obviously, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, this is a new test for the government.

  China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Zhang Junbin Source: China Youth Daily