Theoretically, under the background of rising economic policy uncertainty, the reduction in long-term capital demand caused by the decline in corporate fixed asset investment and the weakening of long-term credit supply willingness of financial institutions will both lead to the shortening of corporate debt maturity structure. Based on the panel data of China’s A-share listed companies, this paper finds that economic policy uncertainty will lead to the shortening of corporate debt maturity structure. The root cause is not at the credit demand side, but at the credit supply side. In other words, economic policy uncertainty leads to the weakening of the willingness of financial institutions to supply long-term credit. Specifically, on the one hand, it is manifested that in companies that do not have government guarantees and have greater financial risks, economic policy uncertainty has a stronger effect on shortening the corporate debt maturity structure; on the other hand, it is manifested that economic policy uncertainty leads to a larger long-term funding gap for companies, which forces companies to use short-term liabilities to support long-term investment. Further research finds that in companies with serious information asymmetry, the effect of economic policy uncertainty on the shortening of the debt maturity structure is stronger, which indicates that information asymmetry is one of the important factors that affect the willingness of financial institutions to supply long-term credit. The research in this article reveals the logic behind the changes in the maturity structure of Chinese corporate debt at this stage, which has certain significance for the effective implementation of structural deleveraging policies.

Taking the merger of National Tax Bureaus (NTB)-Local Tax Bureaus (LTB) in 2018 as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper estimates the impact of reform of tax collection and administration system on the financial market stabilization from the perspective of stock price crash risk. Our difference-in-difference estimation shows that after the NTB-LTB merger reform, firms’ stock price crash risk significantly decreases, and this effect is more pronounced in firms with worse internal governance, lower external supervision and worse reginal legal environment. Further, the mechanism test shows that the NTB-LTB merger reform improves corporate information transparency and promotes firms to confirm and disclose the negative news timelier, and the stock price ultimately is not vulnerable to the negative shock that caused by the centralized release of bad news, which effectively lowers firms’ stock price crash risk. Our findings provide micro-firm level evidence for exploring the impact of tax collection and management on the financial market stabilization, which is of great significance to the current reform of tax collection and management system.

Assessing the micro-economic effects of the merger of National Tax Bureaus (NTB)—Local Tax Bureaus (LTB) don’t only contributes to the full implementation of various corporate tax preferential policies, but also has important significance for establishing and improving the tax management structure under the modern taxation governance system. We regard the NTB-LTB merger reform as a “quasi-natural experiment”, and use the difference in difference method to examine its impact on corporate behavior. The results show that after the NTB-LTB merger reform, the firms’ preventive savings motives strengths, so they hold more cash assets. The reason is that the NTB-LTB merger reform increases firms’ tax burden. The analysis of heterogeneity finds that the impact of the NTB-LTB merger reform on cash holdings will be different due to differences in firms’ internal characteristics and the external environment. Specifically, this effect is more prominent in firm with severe financing constraints, weak profitability, and facing poor tax collection environments. In addition, we also find that in order to alleviate the financial pressure caused by the increase in tax burden, after the NTB-LTB merger reform, enterprises will reduce investment expenditure and employment expenditure on the one hand, and increase commercial credit financing on the other hand. The conclusion of this paper indicates that while improving the tax collection system to regulate corporate taxation behavior, government need to pay special attention to the financial pressure that tax burdens bring to firms to avoid hindering the long-term development of enterprises.