Abstract:Under the background of the slow growth of China''s foreign direct investment inflows, how to cope with the declining host country’s advantage caused by the rapid growth of labor costs is an urgent issue to be studied. A 11 - year equilibrium panel data of 134 countries from 2008 to 2018 is used and two-way fixed effect model is adopted to examine the impact of corporate social security tax on foreign direct investment. The empirical results show that corporate social security tax rate has a negative impact on FDI. The negative impact is moderated by investment motivation, which means the negative impact is only significant in the sample of countries with factors of production acquisition motivation, non-natural resource acquisition motivation and non-technological acquisition motivation. Further, the negative impact of corporate social security tax on FDI varies across economies and geographies, which is only significant in the sample of G20, Asian, American and African countries. Based on the results of empirical research, the relevant policy recommendations and suggestions are put forward to promote the inflow of FDI in China based on the decrease of corporate social security tax rate or tax subsidy.