Export tax refund and the misreporting by Chinese exporters |
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Authors: | Xinzheng Shi Zhufeng Xu |
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Institution: | 1. School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University;2. School of Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics |
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Abstract: | We document how Chinese exporters misreport their exports to China's customs in order to benefit from export tax refunds. We estimate the response of the logarithmic difference between the exports reported in China's customs data and the imports reported in destination countries' customs data to export tax refund rates. We find that with an increase of 1 percentage point in export tax refund rates, the logarithmic difference increases by 0.051. Additionally, with an increase of 1 percentage point in the export tax refund rates of similar products, this gap decreases by 0.024. Further study reveals that quantity manipulation accounts for the majority of the export reporting distortion. |
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