Abstract: The tax incentives for high-tech enterprises will lead to large differences in income tax rates among companion companies, which will result in peer pressure effects. Based on the construction of peer enterprise relationship, this paper takes China’s A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2016 as research objects to conduct an empirical test of the impact of peer pressure generated by high-tech enterprises’ tax incentives on non-high-tech enterprises’ tax incentive rate. The findings show that the peer pressure will significantly increase the tax incentive rate of non-high-tech enterprises; the high-tech enterprise subsidiaries of non-high-tech enterprises have a mitigating effect on their peer pressure. The results of further research show that when the non-high-tech enterprises are state-owned enterprises, off-site enterprises or facing lower-intensity tax collection and management, the influence of peer pressure on their tax incentive rate is more significant.

Key words: high-tech enterprises; peer pressure; tax incentives; rate of tax incentives