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In finance, bad debt, occasionally called uncollectible accounts expense, is a monetary amount owed to a creditor that is unlikely to be paid and for which the creditor is not willing to take action to collect for various reasons, often due to the debtor not having the money to pay, for example due to a company going into liquidation or insolvency.
A charge-off or chargeoff is a declaration by a creditor (usually a credit card account) that an amount of debt is unlikely to be collected. This occurs when a consumer becomes severely delinquent on a debt. Traditionally, creditors make this declaration at the point of six months without payment. A charge-off is a form of write-off.
The distinction is that while a write-off is generally completely removed from the balance sheet, a write-down leaves the asset with a lower value. [4] As an example, one of the consequences of the 2007 subprime crisis for financial institutions was a revaluation under mark-to-market rules: "Washington Mutual will write down by $150 million the ...
For example, a person may own a large house and a valuable car, but not have enough liquid assets to pay a debt when it falls due. Cash-flow insolvency can usually be resolved by negotiation. For example, the bill collector may wait until the car is sold and the debtor agrees to pay a penalty.
Religions like Judaism and Christianity for example, demand that debt be forgiven on a regular basis, in order to prevent systemic inequities between groups in society, or anyone becoming a specialist in holding debt and coercing repayment. An example is the Biblical Jubilee year, described in the Book of Leviticus. [33]
As firms sell assets to pay off debt, asset prices fall which risks an even greater fall in incomes, further depressing tax revenue and requiring governments to drastically cut government services. [23] Examples of debt crises include the Latin American debt crisis of the early 1980s, and Argentina's debt crisis in 2001. To help avoid a crisis ...
If they complete 10, 20, or 25 years of payments, depending on their plan, they qualify to have the rest of their debt written off by the federal government.
An example of debt playing a role in economic crisis was the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression. During the 1980s, Argentina, like many Latin American economies, experienced hyperinflation . As a part of the process put in place to bring inflation under control, a fixed exchange rate was put into place between Argentina 's new currency and ...