Abstract: As a major institutional change in structural tax cuts area, the implementation of the policy of “replacing business tax with value-added tax” has an important impact on the micro-investment behavior of enterprises. Based on the perspective of financing constraints, this paper uses the difference-in-differences method to study the impact of the tax reform on the investment efficiency of enterprises, and examines the moderating effect of corporate financing constraints on the relationship between them. The study finds that the tax reform promotes the investment efficiency of enterprises and has a more significant impact on high-financing companies; compared with over-investment enterprises, the tax policy promotes the investment efficiency of under-investment enterprises, and the impact of financing constraints on the policy effect is more significant in under-investment enterprises; in additional, the promotion effect of the tax reform on corporate investment efficiency mainly exists in non-state-owned enterprises, high-growth enterprises and enterprises with high market competition, which shows that state-owned enterprises are less sensitive to the tax reform. In view of the “crowding out” effect on the improvement of investment efficiency, the relevant provisions of the tax reform should be further improved, the scope of VAT deduction should be expanded, the efficiency of tax collection and management should be strengthened, the financial subsidy mechanism should be optimized, and the VAT tax rate should be adjusted more reasonably, so as to guarantee the maximization of the tax reduction bonus of the reform, and then guide the scientific investment decision-making, improve investment efficiency, and optimize the allocation efficiency of capital market resources.

Key words: “replacing business tax with value-added tax”, investment efficiency, financing constraints, difference-in-differences