The impact of depreciation policy on corporate cash outflow from investing activities

Abstract

This paper mainly studies the impact of accelerated depreciation policy in 2014 on cash flow expenditure of enterprise investment. Aiming at the Information transmission, software and information technology services industry, which is the primary focus of this new policy, we find that corporate cash outflow from investing activities has an obvious increase after the implementation of policy. However, policy incentive effect in this industry only focuses those companies who are in the growing stage but not those whose fixed-asset investment has reached saturation point, because there is no indication that the limit of cash expenditure on investment has been breached in this industry. At the same time, empirical research also points out the cash outflow from investing activities has positive relationships with company’s profitability, cash flow, and firm scale, while negative relationship with firm’s debt ability. However, it remains to be seen what effect the policy will have on a wide range of industries.