The Consumer Debt Clearance Act (消費者債務清理條例) should be amended to make it easier for debtors to apply for bankruptcy, campaigners said yesterday, adding that the number of applicants have not increased significantly following reforms in 2011.
“While we have seen courts making gradual progress in approving a higher proportion of bankruptcy applications, there is still a problem, as the number of applications has not increased significantly,” Legal Aid Foundation secretary-general Chen Wei-shyang (陳為祥) said, adding that the number of debtors has likely increased as worsening economic inequality pushes more people toward debt and the poverty line.
Following reforms in 2011 to clarify key terms of the act and mandate third party mediation, the number of people applying for all forms of bankruptcy proceedings has remained constant, with 16,039 applying last year, compared with 16,282 in 2011, according to statistics provided by the foundation.
Lin Yung-sung (林永頌), a lawyer who serves as a consultant for the Credit Card Debt Victims Self-Help Association, called on the Financial Supervisory Commission to release data on distressed debtors, saying that the commission has not published new figures since 2005.
“The reason more people have not come forward is not because the number of debtors are decreasing,” Lin said, adding: “The reason is that the number of cases that are approved are relatively small and the rate of approval is low.”
He called for amendments to the act to ease the application process, including removing the requirement that debtors demonstrate the impossibility of reaching an agreement with creditors before applying for a court imposed “rehabilitation” settlement or bankruptcy to “clear the accounts.”
The number of years for which debtors are required to pay out “excess income” should be reduced from six to four, he said, calling for the definition of “excess income” to be loosened.
“The definition of necessary living expenses has been pushed extremely low to only 60 percent of the average, but this is not realistic,” he said, calling for the definition to be raised to 80 percent of the average.
Lin said that the NT$12 million (US$310,507) ceiling for filing for bankruptcy should be dropped, while creditors should be required to prove that any asset form errors by debtors would have caused “great losses” before applying for bankruptcy disqualification.
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