"Credit Charge Offs" - What They Mean to Your Credit

Once a charge off was declared by your creditor, they would consider it as bad debt and would be allowed to include it in the Profit and Loss section of the debtor's financial statement. This would allow your creditor to treat your bad debt as a business expense and the Internal Revenue Service would not demand any taxes on these items.

Although it is considered to be a bad debt, it does not mean that it would not be uncollected. Your creditor would still be doing necessary steps in order to collect their money including filing a lawsuit if hiring an outside collection agency does not work.

According to the Fair Credit Report Act, these charge offs could remain for as long as seven years unless your creditor asked the credit bureau to remove it. Of course, you will have to negotiate payment of your debt, whether in partial or full. Factors that your creditor will consider before agreeing to any negotiation include debt amount, offered settlement, and other policies that the creditor requires.

If you are attempting to settle your charge off, you should remember to document everything. Also important is to make arrangement with someone for the creditor's office who has the legal authority to enter into such agreement. You should make sure that the agreement is legal and binding before you pay anything. If not, you will never have the chance to remove the charge-off record on your credit report.

When negotiating payment terms, you should make sure that you are doing so realistically. Do not make promises that you will have difficulties keeping. You will only make matters worse if you try to commit to paying more than you can afford. To deal with your charge-off troubles, you must be able to realistically face your financial situation. Determine what the reasons for your indebtedness were and how you can manage them. In most cases, a change in spending habits and bills management is in order.

charge offs can actually be avoided if you are just diligent in paying your bills or speaking with your lender. On the other hand, if the charge-off is already there in your credit history, then dealing with it should be your top priority. Although it would take some time, it is only the responsible thing to do. You should definitely learn from this experience and make sure it does not happen again.