Tax incentives and environmental protection: evidence from Sweden's taxpayers' level data

Abstract: Tax incentives such as investment tax credit and taxable income deductions related to the environment and climate change are becoming more popular. Introducing tax incentives related to the environment and climate change helps meet the sustainability objectives of growth and development. Many countries worldwide are taking serious steps to counter the mounting challenges due to changing climatic conditions. To meet the sustainability goals, Sweden has set a goal to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 55% in 2030 compared to 1990. In this regard, it is imperative to reflect on the tax incentives provided by the Swedish government in terms of the investment tax credit. It is significant to investigate the beneficiaries of the Swedish government's tax incentives. We selected the top 100 listed companies on the Swedish stock market, Nasdaq Stockholm, to answer this question from 2017 to 2019. Our dependent variable is a dummy indicating 1 for firms who took advantage of the investment tax credit and 0 otherwise. We use ESG scores to construct our dependent variable. Because a higher ESG score reflects a more sustainable approach to production by firms. Therefore, we use dummy 1 for firms on the top of ESG ranking and 0 otherwise. We use different firm-level characteristics as the independent variables, such as age, size, investment, capital, assets, capacity, net capital, and net income. We use a longitudinal research design because sample observations vary across firms and over a short time. We conduct probit and logistic regression to identify the beneficiaries of the tax incentives. The study's findings show that different firm-level characteristics significantly impact the probability of being an ITC beneficiary. For instance, domestic enterprises are more likely to benefit from tax incentives than foreign enterprises, but the relationship is insignificant. In the same way, firms with a maximum number of employees and capital stock are more likely to benefit from the tax incentives than firms with lower capital stocks and limited employees. Our findings also show that firms with higher amounts of new investment in fixed assets are more likely to benefit from the tax incentives. Finally, we found a statistically significant coefficient for firm capacity, an indicator of total inventory. Specifically, the higher the capacity of a firm, the more it is likely to be an ITC beneficiary.