earticle

영어

With the increasing intertwining of the world's economic activity and more emerging countries adopting market reforms and opening themselves to the world economy, increased attention has been given to the need for effective insolvency and bankruptcy laws. An effective insolvency regime must balance the goal of maximizing the value of the debtor's assets with the need to protect the interests of creditors. One of the most challenging tasks in formulating bankruptcy laws is finding the balance between the important public policy of value maximization and the public policy of maintaining the integrity of the debtor's pre-bankruptcy transactions with its creditors. The interaction between bankruptcy and tax law present various dilemmas and raise several questions. The enforcement of a tax claim and its priority confronts the core values of insolvency law which is a system of fair, predictable, and consistently enforced laws and procedures to deal with financial failure. There are, however, no right or wrong answers to these questions. The structure of the country's tax system, underlying policy considerations, and other issues such as culture, history and economic background will influence how a country governs the interaction between tax and bankruptcy system. This article examines the state of the tax claim and its priority as it stands today in the context of the national insolvency laws of England, the United States, Germany, and France. Historically, each of these countries has granted preferential treatment to their respective governments' claims when a taxpayer's is unable to pay tax and insolvent. This article discusses various issues concerning preference of tax claim including the history, their policy justifications, criticism of the priority rules and the comparison of the different approaches that have been adopted in these four countries. In conclusion, the article recommends issues to be considered in revising in insolvency law in conjunction with tax claims.