Do Investors Favor the VAT Reform? Evidence from Comprehensive VAT Transformation and a Reform to Replace Business Tax with Value-added Tax

In recent years, Chinese government takes value-added tax reform as an important measure of reducing tax burden and promoting industrial upgrading. This paper takes VAT transformation in 2009 and a reform to replace the business tax with a value-added tax in 2016 as subjects, and uses event study to test investors' attitudes toward value-added tax reform. It finds that during VAT transformation, the cumulative abnormal return was significantly positive; the cumulative abnormal returns of transition regions, central SOEs as well as value-added tax industries are significantly higher than these ones of pilot areas, local SOEs and business tax industries respectively, illustrating that investors favor VAT transformation policy and are able to distinguish the main beneficiaries of VAT transformation. At the same time, it finds that investors also favor the reform to replace business tax with value-added tax. But the cumulative abnormal returns of involved industries are significantly lower than the ones of uninvolved industries. It may be due to high expected transition costs and spillover effects of the reform. It defines market reaction to the tax reform by studying investors' attitudes toward value-added tax reform, and provides evidence for comprehensive evaluation of the VAT reform.