The tax competition mechanism of local government is regarded as an important source of China’s long-term rapid economic growth. However, with the transformation of China’s economic development goal from high-speed growth to “steady progress”, in this context, exploring the mechanism of local government tax competition on economic resilience is conducive to giving play to the important role of “promising government” in promoting sustained regional economic growth and providing policy guarantee for high-quality economic development. Urban agglomeration is the key to the construction and improvement of China’s economic resilience in the future. Based on the panel data of 183 cities in 14 urban agglomerations in China from 2005 to 2019, this paper constructs a three-dimensional index system of “resistance - recovery and adaptability – transformation” and uses the entropy method to measure economic resilience. The panel fixed effect model, intermediary effect model, and threshold model were used to reveal the impact of tax competition on economic resilience. The study found that: (1) the comprehensive index of economic resilience of 14 urban agglomerations showed a trend of fluctuation during the study period, but the growth rate of urban agglomerations in the eastern region was significantly faster than that of urban agglomerations in the central and western regions, and the economic resilience gap between urban agglomerations was widening. (2) Tax competition can promote the improvement of economic resilience by attracting the inflow of factors, promoting the diversified development of industries, and improving the innovation capacity of cities. (3) The high intensity of tax competition is not conducive to the improvement of economic resilience; tax competition can significantly improve economic resilience in eastern and central regions, but not in western regions. (4) The effect of tax competition on economic resilience is enhanced with the improvement of regional industrial structure. Therefore, first of all, local governments should take the promotion of regional economic resilience as a policy focus, rationally treat and effectively play the incentive effect of tax competition, encourage technological innovation, promote the development of emerging industries, and build diversified industrial clusters. Second, under the strategic guidance of “more resilience”, break the “GDP-only” official evaluation system and shift to the long-term goal of sustainable development and strengthening resilience. Finally, it is necessary to further improve the fiscal and tax benefit distribution mechanism, establish a clear and win-win industrial transfer benefit sharing system, expand and strengthen industrial cooperation demonstration zones, and form a coordinated and orderly industrial transfer and upgrading mechanism between regions, so as to promote the overall improvement of regional economic resilience. The above conclusions provide important policy implications for how fiscal and tax policies serve stable macroeconomic growth and promote the formation of regional economic layouts with complementary advantages and high-quality development under the background of the new normal.