With the rapid development of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing, the digital economy has become an important engine driving global economic growth. Accelerating the development of the digital economy and promoting the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy has become one of the important strategies for China's high-quality development. Under the continuous promotion of the Chinese government, the infrastructure construction of the digital economy is increasingly improving, and new industries, and new business forms are emerging. Especially in the post-COVID-19 period, the digital economy has withstood the pressure of the economic downturn. In 2022, the scale of China's digital economy reached 50.2 trillion yuan, ranking second in the world in total, with a year-on-year nominal growth of 10.3%, accounting for 41.5% of the gross domestic product (SIIO, 2023). The digital economy has not only changed the way people live but also profoundly affected the way enterprises operate and business models. Digital transformation can help enterprises better meet consumer needs and improve production efficiency, and enterprise digital transformation has become an inevitable trend. According to the China Enterprise Digital Transformation Index 2022, the average score of digital transformation of Chinese enterprises in 2022 reached 52 points (based on the maximum score of 100 points of the ideal digital enterprises in the future), which indicates that the digital transformation of Chinese enterprises is steadily advancing. In the face of complex technological and business changes, Chinese enterprises have made great progress in some key areas and indicators to measure digital maturity, and actively adopt digital technologies to accelerate the process of digital transformation, thereby improving market competitiveness and innovation ability. However, the economic and social system, including taxation laws, still focuses on the traditional economy. At present, the relevant policies and regulations in most countries cannot keep up with the development speed of the digital economy. For enterprises, tax evasion and other non-compliance behaviors in the digital economy have become issues of great concern to scholars and governments. Therefore, in the context of the accelerated integration of the digital economy and the real economy, it is of great theoretical value and practical significance to explore the impact of enterprises' digital transformation on tax behavior decisions.
Tax is a legal obligation and an important cost expenditure of enterprises, which directly affects the profits of enterprises, and is also an economic means for the government to participate in the profit distribution of enterprises (Zhou, Lan, & Lin, 2021). In the context of the digital economy, with the emergence of new business models and economic entities, the digital transformation of enterprises has made the recognition of revenue, the division of sources, and the attribution of profits controversial, which has brought about a series of problems such as tax base erosion, profit transfer, and double taxation (Wang, 2020), the importance of regulating the tax administration of e-commerce in the digital economy has reached a consensus among governments around the world. Faced with the problem of corporate tax compliance brought about by the digital economy and the digital transformation of enterprises, China's tax administration reform has continued to innovate and has experienced three stages of tax control by invoice, tax management by information, and tax governance by digital (Li, 2021). However, due to the complexity of tax-related characteristics of the digital economy, enterprises may fall into unfair competition due to mechanism defects in the face of the impact of the tax system framework brought about by the digital transformation of enterprises, unclear income qualitative rules, inappropriate rules for the determination of permanent institutions, and increasing disputes over profit distribution. What is the impact of corporate digital transformation on tax compliance? What is the mechanism of this effect? The exploration of this issue is helpful to evaluate the implementation effect of enterprises' digital transformation, and further deepen the understanding of digitally-enabled corporate governance from the perspective of tax compliance. It can not only provide micro-evidence support for the government to actively promote enterprises' digital transformation but also provide theoretical references and empirical evidence for improving the tax administration system of enterprises' tax compliance.
The existing literature on the consequences of enterprise digital transformation mainly focuses on reducing enterprise cost (Chen & Zhou, 2021; Pan & Xu, 2023; Yuan, Xiao, Geng, & Sheng, 2021), influencing enterprise capital market pricing (Li, 2023; Peng, Wang, & Gu, 2023; Yu, Wang, Hao, & Dong, 2023), improving enterprise technological innovation ability (Wang, Quan, Li, & Sang, 2023; Zhang & Han, 2023; Zhao & Huang, 2023), etc., but have not studied its impact on the important financial behavior of enterprise tax compliance. Studies on the influencing factors of corporate tax compliance mainly focus on internal governance factors such as equity incentives (Rego & Wilson, 2012; Wenwu, Khurram, Qing, & Rafiq, 2023), board of directors, and senior executives (Li, Wu, & Hu, 2016; Wen, Cui, & Ke, 2020; Yu & Li, 2022), and external governance factors such as tax reduction (Cheng & Li, 2023; Li & Guo, 2021), financial transparency (Chu & Jiang, 2023; Hao, Yang, & Wang, 2022) and tax administration (Chen, Liu, & LU, 2023; Fan & Li, 2020; Qu, 2018), while ignoring the impact of digital transformation, a strategic decision of enterprises. Based on this, this study takes Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2022 as a sample to investigate the impact of enterprise digital transformation on tax compliance behavior and further studies its mechanism and heterogeneity. The contributions of this study are mainly reflected in three aspects: First, in the context of the comprehensive construction of the digital economy in countries around the world, it expands and deepens the understanding of the impact of digital transformation on corporate financial behavior from the micro-perspective of corporate tax compliance, enriches the research on the economic consequences of corporate digital transformation, and provides the empirical basis for the government to promote enterprises to carry out digital transformation; Second, from the perspective of digital transformation, this paper analyzes the impact of corporate strategic decision-making on tax compliance behavior, enriches the research on the influencing factors of corporate tax compliance behavior, and provides references for improving the level of national tax administration. Third, from the perspective of tax avoidance costs, this study examines the mechanism of enterprises' digital transformation affecting tax compliance behavior, opens the black box between enterprises' digital transformation and tax compliance behavior, and provides empirical evidence for insight into the logical relationship.