The Impact of the Environmental Protection Tax on the Export Scale of Heavily Polluting Enterprises—A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on the Implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax La

The reform from environmental protection fees to an environmental protection tax represents a key initiative in China's environmental taxation reform.How does this policy affect the export scale of energy-intensive and high-emission enterprises (referred to as "two high" enterprises)?Based on a quasi-natural experiment following the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law, this study employs data from Ashare industrial listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges between 2015 and 2020.A difference-in-differences model is applied to empirically analyze the impact of the environmental protection tax on the export scale of heavily polluting enterprises.The results reveal that the environmental tax policy significantly reduces the marginal output of firms' production factors through the "compliance cost effect," thereby inhibiting the growth of their export scale.Based on these findings, policy recommendations are proposed to better balance environmental protection with economic performance, aiming for a synergistic development of both.