Industry WIKI

The Avignon Exchange was one of the first foreign exchange markets in history, established in the Comtat Venaissin during the Avignon Papacy. The Exchange was composed of the agents (factores) of the great Italian banking-houses, who acted as money-changers as well as financial intermediaries between the Apostolic Camera and its debtors and creditors. The most prosperous quarter of the c

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 high bad debt rate is caused when a b

A bank transaction tax is a tax levied on debit (and/or credit) entries on bank accounts. In 1989, at the Buenos Aires meetings of the International Institute of Public Finance, University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor of Economics Edgar L. Feige proposed extending the tax reform ideas of John Maynard Keynes, James Tobin and Lawrence Summers, to their logical conclusion, namely to tax a

The consumer leverage ratio (CLR) is the ratio of total household debt to disposable personal income. The Federal Reserve separately reports household debt service payments as a percentage of disposable personal income. The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes disposable personal income data.

Credit counseling (known in the United Kingdom as debt counseling) is a process used to help individual debtors overcome their debt through financial education, budgeting, debt management plans (DMPs) – known in the United Kingdom as the individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) – and a variety of other tools with the goal of reducing and ultimately eliminating debt.

Credit scoring systems in the United States have garnered considerable criticism from various media outlets, consumer law organizations, government officials, debtors unions, and academics. Racial bias, discrimination against prospective employees, discrimination against medical and student debt holders, poor risk predictability, manipulation of credit scoring algorithms, inaccurate repo

A currency transaction tax is a tax placed on the use of currency for various types of transactions. The tax is associated with the financial sector and is a type of financial transaction tax, as opposed to a consumption tax paid by consumers, though the tax may be passed on by the financial institution to the customer.

A debt buyer is a company, sometimes a collection agency, a private debt collection law firm, or a private investor, that purchases delinquent or charged-off debts from a creditor or lender for a percentage of the face value of the debt based on the potential collectibility of the accounts. The debt buyer can then collect on its own, utilize the services of a third-party collection agenc

Debt collection or cash collection is the process of pursuing payments of money or other agreed-upon value owed to a creditor. The debtors may be individuals or businesses. An organization that specializes in debt collection is known as a collection agency or debt collector. Most collection agencies operate as agents of creditors. They collect debts for a fee or percentage of the total a

Debt consolidation is a form of debt refinancing that entails taking out one loan to pay off many others. This commonly refers to a personal finance process of individuals addressing high consumer debt, but occasionally it can also refer to a country's fiscal approach to consolidate corporate debt or government debt. The process can secure a lower overall interest rate to the entire debt

Debt evasion is the intentional act of trying to avoid attempts by creditors to collect or pursue one's debt. At an elementary level, this includes the refusal to answer one's phone by screening one's calls or by ignoring mailed notices informing the debtor of the debt. In more advanced cases, this includes misleading the creditor to believe the debtor does not reside at the location whe

Debt management plan (DMP) is an agreement between a debtor and a creditor that addresses the terms of an outstanding debt. This commonly refers to a personal finance process of individuals addressing high consumer debt. Debt management plans help reduce outstanding, unsecured debts over time to help the debtor regain control of finances. The process can secure a lower overall interest r

The debt snowball method is a debt-reduction strategy, whereby one who owes on more than one account pays off the accounts starting with the smallest balances first, while paying the minimum payment on larger debts. Once the smallest debt is paid off, one proceeds to the next larger debt, and so forth, proceeding to the largest ones last. This method is sometimes contrasted with the deb

In the consumer mortgage industry, debt-to-income ratio (DTI) is the percentage of a consumer's monthly gross income that goes toward paying debts. (Speaking precisely, DTIs often cover more than just debts; they can include principal, taxes, fees, and insurance premiums as well. Nevertheless, the term is a set phrase that serves as a convenient, well-understood shorthand.) There are two

A debtor or debitor is a legal entity (legal person) that owes a debt to another entity. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor. When the counterpart of this debt arrangement is a bank, the debtor is more often referred to as a borrower.

Debtors Anonymous (D.A.) is a twelve-step program for people who want to stop incurring unsecured debt. Collectively they attend more than 500 weekly meetings in fifteen countries, according to data released in 2011. Those who compulsively incur unsecured debt are said to be engaged in compulsive borrowing and are known as compulsive debtors.

The default traps in sovereign borrowing refers to the idea that once a country falls into a default, it is more likely to default again in the future, compared to another country with identical future output ability. The idea of default traps is related with the asymmetric information between the borrower and the lender about the expectation of borrower's future output (GDP), the negati

Double taxation is the levying of tax by two or more jurisdictions on the same income (in the case of income taxes), asset (in the case of capital taxes), or financial transaction (in the case of sales taxes).

A country's gross external debt (or foreign debt) is the liabilities that are owed to nonresidents by residents. The debtors can be governments, corporations or citizens. External debt may be denominated in domestic or foreign currency. It includes amounts owed to private commercial banks, foreign governments, or international financial institutions such as the International Monetary

Fair debt collection broadly refers to regulation of the United States debt collection industry at both the federal and state level. At the Federal level, it is primarily governed by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). In addition, many U.S. states also have debt collection laws that regulate the credit and collection industry and give consumer debtors protection from abusive

The Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) is the report published by the advocacy organization Tax Justice Network (TJN) which ranks countries by financial secrecy indicators, weighted by the economic flows of each country.

Debt relief, or debt forgiveness, has been practiced in many societies since antiquity. Periodic debt remission was institutionalised in the Ancient Near East and contributed to the stability of its societies. In ancient Greece and Rome the laws were more creditor-friendly and debt cancellation was one of the major demands of the poor, only occasionally implemented by the government. Med

Household debt is the combined debt of all people in a household, including consumer debt and mortgage loans. A significant rise in the level of this debt coincides historically with many severe economic crises and was a cause of the U.S. and subsequent euro area crisis. Several economists have argued that lowering this debt is essential to economic recovery in the U.S. and selected Euro

A loan guarantee, in finance, is a promise by one party (the guarantor) to assume the debt obligation of a borrower if that borrower defaults. A guarantee can be limited or unlimited, making the guarantor liable for only a portion or all of the debt.

A loan shark is a person who offers loans at interest rates that are extremely high or illegal, has strict terms of collection, and generally operates outside the law, often using the threat of violence or other illegal, aggressive, and extortionate actions when seeking to enforce the satisfaction of the debt. As a consistent or repeated illegal business operation or "racket", loan shark

Medical debt refers to debt incurred by individuals due to health care costs and related expenses, such as an ambulance ride or the cost of visiting a doctor.

Negative equity is a deficit of owner's equity, occurring when the value of an asset used to secure a loan is less than the outstanding balance on the loan. In the United States, assets (particularly real estate, whose loans are mortgages) with negative equity are often referred to as being "underwater", and loans and borrowers with negative equity are said to be "upside down".

In international law, odious debt, also known as illegitimate debt, is a legal theory that says that the national debt incurred by a despotic regime should not be enforceable. Such debts are, thus, considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the government that incurred them and not debts of the state. In some respects, the concept is analogous to the invalidity of contracts sign

The Republic of Panama is one of the oldest and best-known tax havens in the Caribbean, as well as one of the most established in the region. Panama has had a reputation for tax avoidance since the early 20th century, and Panama has been cited repeatedly in recent years as a jurisdiction which does not cooperate with international tax transparency initiatives.

A payday loan (also called a payday advance, salary loan, payroll loan, small dollar loan, short term, or cash advance loan) is a small, short-term unsecured loan, "regardless of whether repayment of loans is linked to a borrower's payday." The loans are also sometimes referred to as "cash advances," though that term can also refer to cash provided against a prearranged line of credit su

Phantom debt or zombie debt is a debt that is old, defaulted, or not owed and is somehow still being pursued for collection to be paid by the presumed debtor. It generally refers to debt that is more than 3 years old, is long forgotten about or belonged to someone else – like someone with the same name or a deceased parent. The amount owed can grow to hundreds or thousands of dollars mor

In lending, a pre-approval is the pre-qualification for a loan or mortgage of a certain value range.

Securities Transaction Tax (STT) is a tax payable in India on the value of securities (excluding commodities and currency) transacted through a recognised stock exchange. As of 2016, it is 0.1% for delivery based equity trading.

A Spahn tax is a type of currency transaction tax that is meant to be used for the purpose of controlling exchange-rate volatility. This idea was proposed by Paul Bernd Spahn in 1995.

The tax burden is the level of effective taxation represented as the distribution of tax rates across people, households, sectors, or forms of income by the amount of their income. Tax burdens are commonly summarized as the tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product for different groups; usually as the effective tax rates paid by different income groups as a share of their income o

Tax competition, a form of regulatory competition, exists when governments use reductions in fiscal burdens to encourage the inflow of productive resources or to discourage the exodus of those resources. Often, this means a governmental strategy of attracting foreign direct investment, foreign indirect investment (financial investment), and high value human resources by minimizing the ov

Tax compliance software is software that assists tax compliance, and may cover income tax, corporate tax, VAT, service tax, customs, sales tax, use tax, or other taxes its users may be required to pay. The software automatically calculates a user's tax liabilities to the government, keeps track of all transactions (in case of indirect taxes), keeps track of eligible tax credits, etc. The

In Algeria, the most important sources of government revenue have been oil and gas royalties.

Due to the absence of the tax code in Argentina, the tax regulation takes place in accordance with separate laws, which, in turn, are supplemented by provisions of normative acts adopted by the executive authorities. The powers of the executive authority include levying a tax on profits, property and added value throughout the national territory. In Argentina, the tax policy is implemen

Taxes in Cyprus are levied by both the central and local governments. Tax revenue stood at 39.2% of GDP in 2012. The most important revenue sources are the income tax, social security, value-added tax and corporate tax, and are all collected by the central government.

Taxation in Estonia consists of state and local taxes. A relatively high proportion of government revenue comes from consumption taxes whilst revenue from capital taxes is one of the lowest in the European Union.

Taxes in Iceland are levied by the state and the municipalities. Property rights are strong and Iceland is one of the few countries where they are applied to fishery management. Taxpayers pay various subsidies to each other, similar to European countries that are welfare states, but the spending is less than in most European countries. Despite low tax rates in relation to European welfar

In 2010, the United States implemented the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act; the law required financial firms around the world to report accounts held by US citizens to the Internal Revenue Service.

Vendor finance is a form of lending in which a vendor, instead of a bank or financial institution, lends money to be used by the borrower to buy the vendor's products or property. Vendor finance is usually in the form of deferred loans from, or shares subscribed by, the vendor. The vendor often takes shares in the borrowing company. This category of finance is generally used where the ve

A vulture fund is a hedge fund or private-equity fund that invests in debt considered to be very weak or in default, known as distressed debt. Investors in the fund profit by buying debt at a discounted price on a secondary market and then using numerous methods to sell the debt for more than the purchasing price. Debtors include companies, countries, and individuals.