Regulation and Taxation of Commercial Banks during the International Debt Crisis

摘要

Since the introduction of the market-based menu approach to debt reduction, specialists in developing country finance have had to refocus their thinking about the tax, accounting, and regulatory treatment of sovereign debt. This was because the market-based menu was designed to allow banks to choose financing options that best suited their individual tax and regulatory environments. Some policy makers were also interested in discovering whether or not there were tax and/or regulatory obstacles to voluntary debt reduction. The market-based menu is no longer a new development; precedents and policies have been established with respect to the tax, accounting and regulatory treatment of these transactions. Much of the report is a presentation of these precedents and policies. The report is structured as follows. Section I serves as an introduction and summarizes the report's conclusions. Section II outlines recent debt restructuring operations. Section III analyzes how commercial banks have responded to recent debt restructuring operations. Finally, Section IV gives a country-by-country analysis of the tax, regulatory and accounting treatment of voluntary debt reduction operations.