Abstract: Manufacturing industry has been the foundation of a country’s economic development and prosperity. Since the reform and opening up, with China’s manufacturing industry’s having experienced robust growth, the investment effect has not been satisfactory. The fixed asset investment of enterprises is influenced directly by tax, an important factor affecting the cost of capital use and investment income. This study, employing the established fixed assets investment tax model, calculates the capital use cost and the actual income tax rate of manufacturing industry (2002-2016) in China. The enterprise income tax reform in 2008, the findings tell, though significantly reducing the capital use cost and income tax burden of the manufacturing industry, the overall burden stays still high. For this reason, the fixed effect model of panel threshold is established to further verify these conclusions, telling an inverted U shape relationship between manufacturing capital use cost and investment, with the critical point being 8.108%. Below this point, the investment will increase by 0.198 7% for every 1% increase in capital cost. Beyond this point, the investment will decrease by 0.078 9% for every 1% increase in capital cost. At the same time, the effective tax rate of income tax borne by manufacturing capital has a linear relationship with investment; for every 1% increase in the effective tax rate, the investment will decrease by 0.158 4%. Since the current capital use cost of manufacturing industry (except for some provinces such as Gansu) exceeds the critical point, in the future, we should further improve the enterprise income tax and continue to reduce the income tax burden and capital use cost borne by manufacturing industry capital so as to encourage enterprise investment and provide strong policy support for the realization of “manufacturing power”.

Key words: cost of capital use, effective tax rate of enterprise income tax, investment in fixed-asset