Withdrawn Federal Tax Liens

Several years ago the IRS announced a kinder, gentler approach to collecting unpaid taxes. Their new methods include the opportunity to have your tax lien withdrawn if you pay it in full or enter into a repayment agreement that leads to payment in full. And while the IRS doesn’t have anything to do with credit reporting, the credit bureaus all have policies in place that they will remove any withdrawn tax liens. Please keep in mind that a “released” tax lien is not the same thing as a withdrawn tax lien. Released liens remain on credit reports for seven years from the release date.

 Vacated Judgments

If you’ve been sued by a creditor, collection agency or other party and lost, you have had a judgment rendered against you. Judgments, like tax liens, are public records and the credit reporting agencies often pick them up and report them on consumer credit reports. Judgments are maintained for seven years from the filing date—whether they’re paid, unpaid, satisfied, or not. The only exception to that rule is if the judgment is vacated. A vacated judgment essentially means that it never existed. The credit bureaus will remove them as long as it’s clear that they have been vacated rather than simply paid and satisfied.

Unverifiable Items

One of the great myths of credit reports is that you can only get errors removed. That simply isn’t true. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the federal statute that defines the rules of credit reporting, requires the credit bureaus to verify items with the original source if they are disputed. That means a completely accurate collection or repossession, or any other negative item, will be removed from your credit reports if the credit bureaus are unable to verify its accuracy with the reporting source.

Fraudulent Items

The number one complaint to the Federal Trade Commission is identity theft and fraud, and has been for more than 14 straight years. If you end up with something fraudulent on your credit reports, regardless of what it is, you can have it removed from your credit reports. The FCRA mandates that the credit bureaus must block the information within four business days of receiving an identity theft report from the consumer. An identity theft report is a combination of an identity theft affidavit and a police report. Consumers must provide this report in order to leverage their identity theft protections under the FCRA.

 Authorized User Credit Card Accounts

If you’ve been added as a non-liable party to an existing credit card you are what is referred to as an authorized user. You have a card with your name on it, have full charging privileges, but are not liable for any of the charges or debts. It’s very common for credit card accounts to appear on their authorized user’s credit reports. Because the authorized user is not liable for the debt, it has historically been very easy to have the account removed from their credit reports. In fact, some of the credit bureaus had policies in place that they would simply delete them without any form of investigation if the consumer asked them to do so. Times have changed and today it’s not as easy to have them removed, although it’s not impossible. Make sure that you actually have your name taken off the card as an authorized user before you attempt to have it removed from your credit reports. That will make the process much easier.