To abolish or not? Analysis of the taxman's retrievel recourse at bankruptcies

One advantage is that it prevents banks and firms from exploiting a loophole in the law. A second advantage is that firms with a low survival chance are more quickly reorganised. The main disadvantage is that the tax authorities lose money.

A second - less obvious - disadvantage is that SME's will unnecessarily go bankrupt after the abolishment of the preferential treatment. This is so because banks are relatively uninterested in SME's. A solution is to abolish the treatment for large firms and to keep it for small firms. Another solution is to encourage the tax authorities to be tougher on large firms.

This publication is in Dutch.