Following the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law and the Company Law, the People's Court promulgated the Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Enterprise Bankruptcy Cases in July 2002 (hereinafter referred to as the Bankruptcy Provisions). Because the accounting principles of bankruptcy liquidation are very different from conventional accounting, the accounting methods of bankruptcy liquidation are inevitably different from conventional accounting. At present, there are no relevant accounting standards for bankruptcy liquidation accounting in China, mainly the Interim Provisions on Trial Bankruptcy Accounting Treatment of State-owned Enterprises (hereinafter referred to as the Interim Provisions) formulated by the Ministry of Finance in 1997. However, in the current accounting practice, there are still some problems to be solved urgently. This paper attempts to discuss these problems in order to attract more attention.

On the setting of accounting subjects in liquidation group

The liquidation group may refer to the requirements of the Interim Provisions to set up accounting subjects and prepare accounting statements to meet the needs of basic accounting in liquidation. However, in practice, I feel that the 23 accounting subjects formulated in the Interim Provisions cannot fully reflect and account for the economic business in the liquidation work. Therefore, the author considers adding some accounting subjects.

1. Add the subjects of "assets used as collateral" and "debts secured by property" to reflect and account for legally and effectively secured mortgaged assets and effectively secured debts before the enterprise is declared bankrupt. Although there is property guarantee, the debt whose amount exceeds the value of collateral is not accounted for in the subject of "debt with property guarantee", but is still accounted for in the subject of "other payables" of ordinary debt. If the value of collateral exceeds the debt amount confirmed by registration, it is not accounted for in the subject of "assets used as collateral", but is still accounted for in the related subjects of ordinary assets.

2. Add the subject of "payable liquidation expenses" to reflect and calculate the payable and unpaid liquidation expenses according to the provisions of the contract and agreement during the liquidation period.

3. The liquidation group shall set up a memorandum book to reflect and account for other people's property owned and used by the bankrupt enterprise, but the property right of the property does not belong to the bankrupt enterprise. According to Article 7 1 of the Bankruptcy Regulations of the People's Court, the debtor occupies and uses other people's property based on legal relationships such as warehousing, custody, processing contract, entrusted transaction, consignment, borrowing, custody and leasing. Not bankrupt property, it should be recovered by the property owner. At the same time, the bankruptcy regulations also stipulate that after the bankruptcy declaration, if the property is damaged or lost due to the responsibility of the liquidation team, the property owner has the right to receive equivalent compensation. Therefore, the liquidation group shall set up relevant memorandum books to properly keep the above property.

4. The account of "debt payable in liquidation period" can be added, and the account of "borrowed assets in liquidation period" can also be added as the account of "debt payable in liquidation period" as needed. If the bankrupt property of the bankrupt enterprise cannot be realized for a while and there is a shortage of funds, the liquidation team has to borrow funds to pay the liquidation expenses; At the same time, during the liquidation period, the liquidation group needs to pay the expenses for the custody, management and sale of the bankrupt property, which cannot be paid in time due to the shortage of funds and other reasons. At this time, the liquidation group will account for the debts generated in the liquidation process. These debts are not bankruptcy claims and need to be accounted for separately. These two subjects can be added.

Confirmation and evaluation of assets when an enterprise declares bankruptcy

Bankruptcy liquidation accounting is based on the loss of enterprise subject qualification and the termination of production and operation, and realizes the elimination of specific enterprise subject qualification and the termination of production and operation activities through liquidation. After the enterprise was declared bankrupt, the liquidation group appeared as a new accounting entity. In the case of bankruptcy liquidation, some basic accounting principles, such as historical cost principle, are difficult to be adopted for bankruptcy liquidation accounting due to changes in the economic environment in which enterprises are located. At the same time, in bankruptcy liquidation accounting, asset value pays more attention to realizable value. For example, after the liquidation group takes over the bankrupt enterprise, when establishing a new account to carry forward the opening balance, because the going concern assumption is no longer applicable, it cannot be carried forward directly according to the balance of related subjects of the bankrupt enterprise, but should be accounted according to the realizable value of the assets, and the book assets such as deferred expenses and deferred assets that do not meet the definition of assets and have no realizable value should be written off. However, when the value of bankruptcy property is confirmed and recorded according to the realizable value, there is the problem of how to determine the realizable value of bankruptcy property.

The realizable value can be obtained in two ways: one is to determine the realizable value by using the assessed value of assets; Second, with the promulgation and implementation of the Accounting System for Business Enterprises and the Accounting System for Financial Enterprises, the historical cost principle is adjusted. The concept of realizable value is introduced by extracting eight impairment provisions. For bankrupt enterprises that apply the new accounting system correctly, the book value can be used to determine the realizable value. However, in the actual accounting practice, the liquidation group did not conduct a comprehensive asset evaluation of the assets of the enterprise when it was established, so there was no evaluation value to use. Because the new accounting system was promulgated late and not fully implemented, many enterprises have not adopted the new accounting system. Therefore, after the liquidation group takes over the bankrupt enterprise, it should first set aside eight impairment reserves according to the requirements of the new accounting system, adjust the historical cost valuation principle, and then use the book value of assets to determine the realizable value of assets to adapt to the changes in the asset valuation principle under the bankruptcy liquidation environment.

Accounting treatment of external guarantee of bankrupt enterprises

Article 23 of the Bankruptcy Regulations stipulates that if one or more joint debtors go bankrupt, creditors may exercise their rights to the debtors and declare their claims. If the creditor fails to declare his creditor's rights, other joint debtors may declare his creditor's rights on the debts that may be assumed in the future. According to this regulation, if the bankrupt enterprise provides external guarantee before declaring bankruptcy, the creditors can declare their claims to the liquidation group. Therefore, due to the bankruptcy of the enterprise, the potential obligations of the bankrupt enterprise are transformed into current obligations, and the amount can be measured reliably, which meets the conditions for recognizing contingent liabilities as liabilities in the Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises-Contingent Liabilities. Therefore, the liquidation group should make up the guaranteed debts: debit: liquidation gains and losses, and credit: other payables.

After paying off the debts to the creditors, the liquidation group may, in accordance with the provisions of relevant laws, claim compensation from the guarantor for the amount paid off. However, the financial situation and solvency of the guaranteed enterprise are very uncertain. More importantly, before the end of bankruptcy work, it is impossible to determine the repayment ratio of bankrupt enterprises to creditors, that is to say, the amount of debts repaid by bankrupt enterprises due to external guarantees is still uncertain. Therefore, the amount that the bankrupt enterprise can recover from the guarantor can't be determined before the bankruptcy liquidation creditor's rights are paid off, and it doesn't meet the condition of separately recognizing assets stipulated in the Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises-Contingencies, so it can only be disclosed as a contingency.