in arrears

arrears | Business English

arrears
noun[ plural ]
 FINANCEuk /əˈrɪəz/us
money that is owed and should already have been paid:
He ran into difficulties with his mortgage, building up more than £18,000 arrears.
The government is committed to the full and timely payment of its public debt and arrears.
 in arrears
owing money that should have been paid in the past:
Only 75 of its 7,300 borrowers are in arrears.
About 180,000 homeowners were more than three months in arrears.
UKif someone is paid in arrears, they are paid at the end of the period of time during which the money was earned:
Childcare often has to be paid for in advance, while salaries are paid in arrears.

Examples of arrears

arrears
The workers' pay was kept months in arrears, until they refused to work, while the daily returns recorded more workers than were employed.
However, rent direct reduced landlords' rent collection costs and minimised the possibility of rent arrears.
Policy makers knew that large increases in the minimum wage or pension would undermine their attempts to clear arrears before the election.
During the 1995 campaign, the goals of increasing wages and pensions conflicted more noticeably with that of decreasing arrears.
Families drew on various sorts of credit - they fell into arrears of rent, they borrowed from shops, dealers, and neighbours.
Their contribution rates are already 30 % of payroll, fully spent and many enterprises are in arrears.
Moreover, legal actions were instituted and property and buildings were seized from non-payers in an attempt to recover some of the payment arrears.
However, when hard times hit in the middle of the 1620s he began to fall into arrears on his rents.
The government then recoups the payment from the non-resident parent and bears the burden of missed payments and arrears.
Other sources of income, mainly assessment and excise taxes, proved insufficient to pay parliament's soldiers regularly and wages fell steadily in arrears throughout the conflict.
The arrears were paid in the form of extra forced labour.
Since many enterprises are in arrears, the effective support ratio is lower, closer to 2n5 workers for every pensioner.
The compilers attempted to account for every possible item of income and expenditure, including redemption payment and tax arrears.
The collection of scarcely any of the city fifteenths of these years passes without reference to the collection of arrears.
Figures were not available for pension arrears, but some news reports suggest that this was a priority for the president and government during this period.
See all examples of arrears
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.