关键词: 税收营商环境, 税务系统“放管服”, 创业活跃度

Abstract: A good taxation business environment is an important driving force to fully stimulate the entrepreneurial vitality of a city and promote the high-quality development of a city. Based on the data of 286 prefecture-level cities from 2012 to 2021, this paper employs the reform of the tax system, i. e. the “decentralization, management and service” reform as a quasi-natural experiment and adopts the asymptotic double-difference method to conduct a theoretical analysis and an empirical test of how the optimization of the business environment for taxation affects the entrepreneurial activity of the cities. The study finds that the optimization of taxation business environment significantly increases urban entrepreneurial activity, and this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis shows that the optimization of taxation business environment enhances urban entrepreneurial activity by reducing institutional transaction costs and improving the level of talent concentration. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the enhancement effect of taxation business environment optimization on urban entrepreneurial activity is more prominent in low-administrative-level cities, resource-based cities, labor-intensive industries, and service industries. This study helps to provide theoretical basis and policy implications for further deepening the reform of “decentralization, management and service” in the tax system to enhance urban entrepreneurial activity.

Key words: Taxation Business Environment, Tax System “Decentralization, Management and Service”, Entrepreneurial Activity