What is a charge off?

A charge off is an accounting method that allows a company to remove a bad debt from the company balance sheet. This can be utilized when a bad debt is clearly no going to be paid by a debtor. Charge offs provide several advantages for a company. It eliminates the appearance of the line item on the income statement for the corporation. This would mean that the bad debt does not appear as net income on the financial records of the company and would not be subject to taxes. The people that handle the accounting, no longer have to spend time dealing with it.

As a debtor, a charge off would be a negative mark on your credit report and would impact your credit score greatly. It is in your best interest to try to negotiate or pay the bad debt off. You can contact a lawyer or a debt negotiator to try and help you if you are not comfortable doing it yourself.

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What is a Charge Off?

A charge off is a debt that a company has written off as noncollectable. Once they have written the debt off they can take off the loss on their tax returns. That is not where it ends for the person who took out the loan however. For the borrower they will have a charge off or a collection account on their credit report. This is not a good thing for your credit score. One charge off can drop your credit score over 100 points. The only want to take care of it is to pay it off. You will need to speak with the company that is handling the collection of the old debt. That's right, the old company may have written it off, but that doesn't mean that you are out of the woods on paying it back. A collection agency may buy the old debt for pennies on the dollar and try to collect on it. They have a legal claim to collect from you and will not remove the bad mark on your credit until you pay up.

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