“以数治税”能否揭露企业信用风险？——来自债券市场的证据

Under conditions of information asymmetry, traditional tax administration systems allow firms’ latent credit risks to remain partially concealed and delayed in market disclosure. With the advancement of “data-driven tax governance”, tax administration has strengthened information transparency and data penetration, potentially reshaping how corporate credit risks are priced in capital markets. Taking the nationwide pilot of fully digitalized electronic invoices (Golden Tax Phase IV), launched in December 2021, as an exogenous institutional shock, this paper uses monthly credit spread data from the secondary bond market spanning January 2020 to December 2024 and employs a DID design to examine whether tax administration digitalization accelerates the market revelation of corporate credit risks. The results show that “data-driven tax governance” significantly increases corporate bond credit spreads in pilot regions, indicating a heightened degree of credit risk revelation in market pricing. This effect operates primarily through three channels: risk signaling, risk realization, and risk linkage; and it is more pronounced among firms with weaker operating cash flows, less effective internal control systems, and stronger tax avoidance incentives and behaviors. The study suggests that tax administration digitalization not only improves tax enforcement efficiency but also enhances the risk-identification function of capital markets, with important implications for financial stability and the modernization of economic governance.