Abstract: By making use of the panel data of the prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province from 2008 to 2015, this study employs the strength DID model to conduct an empirical test of the impact of replacing business tax with value-added tax on the local governments’ behavior of commercial and residential land transfer. The findings show that replacing business tax with value-added tax can give the local governments that are faced with higher financial pressure more income from commercial and residential land transfer, but the listing-for-sale method is preferred to the auction method, and the prices of the listing-for-sale method are significantly raised. After RBTVAT, local governments can not only obtain greater amounts of commercial and residential land transfer fees, but also introduce the strong enterprises to have a spillover effect on the regional development through the listing-for-sale method. Therefore, in the future process of fiscal and tax system reform, land finance regulation and transformation, the local governments should not only consider how to relieve financial pressure, but also consider improving the process of listing-for-sale, or constructing a transparent intervention mechanism for land transfer.

Key words: RBTVAT; local government; land finance; behavior of commercial and residential land transfer; listing-for-sale