Abstract: Taking China’s A-share listed companies during the period of 2004-2014 as the samples, this paper empirically examines the influence of official visits on corporate tax burden with the hand-collected data of official visits. The findings show that official visits can significantly relieve corporate tax burden. Compared with the enterprises visited by non-officials, the enterprises visited by officials have lower applicable tax rate and real income tax rate. Further study shows that the tax burden relieving effect of official visits is not only affected by the nature of property right and the implementation of the new Law of Corporation Income Tax, but also has differences due to the “top leader”mechanism and the different visiting purposes, i.e., the tax burden effect of official visits exists only in non-state-owned enterprises and companies with reformed tax system. Compared with the visits of non-Party and government leadership members, only the visits of the Party and government leadership members can relieve the tax burden on enterprises. The inspective and investigative visits of the instructive officials can significantly relieve enterprises’ tax rate, while the checking and supervising visits of the supervising officials can induce heavier tax burden on the enterprises.

Key words: official visits; tax burden; applicable tax rate; real income tax rate