I just want to give up. Bad Day.

[Erika]

I've been plugging along at my and my husband's credit scores and have been happy with the results. According to PG, my husband's scores are all up over 60 points, well into the 600's. I had a minor glitch with a collection I forgot about, so I had a dip and have now started to bring them back up.

We had a state tax lien filed 2 months ago. We paid it within weeks. It was reported within days. It didn't affect our PG scores one point, so I naively thought our FICO's were safe.

I pulled MYFICO.com's on us today and got a gut check. Our scores are about the same or lower than they were 6 months ago when I started this process. According to PG, in that amount of time I've raised our scores 60 - 70 points and was feeling so good! So my assumption is that PG didn't factor in the tax lien and it really did hit us for that many points.

I'm just sick to my stomach. We could be at that magical 600 for our mortgage. Instead, my middle is 522 and husband's middle is 556. I'm so bummed. It was a bad decision thinking that the state would hold off another 6 months while we paid off other debt that was affecting our credit. The lien was filed for $1500 in state taxes.

No need to respond... just demoralized. Let this be a lesson to anyone out there with past due taxes....

Erika

[edubb007]

Never give up! I dipped, swerved, fell and was raised up repeatedly during my FICO battle! You'll get there just keep plugging away at it! Make sure you go after smart battles and do things that will set you up in the future! Keep it up!

[breathing_easier]

Don't get too discouraged Erika. I think every one of us has had days like yours. My most discouraging day was when I found out that my inept mortgage broker had agreed to pay one of my CAs 100% of a very large balance due an OC. I was very upset to learn at the closing that he had agreed to pay 100%, but I consoled myself later with the fact that it would be easy to get this OC to update to positive or delete their negative tradeline. It was months later when I learned that the OC had sold the debt immediately after chargeoff and the CA, a junk debt buyer, had received the benefit of that huge payment. Needless to say, I have not yet been able to get the OC to budge on deleting their TL. My lesson learned was to do your own settlement negotiations. It was too late for me, as all my accounts have been settled and paid, but it's wisdom I can pass along to newbies, just as you are passing along your hard-earned knowledge about paying taxes before you pay unsecured debt. The government always plays hardball.

[Ahntara]

Try not to get toooo discouraged. You've just hit a bump in the road.

Lots of people think when they have credit issues that it's all over and they give up. Not true! Your credit is scored and evaluated based on ALL the information showing. You need to continue to have positive, open, ongoing credit to offset any derogatory information that is there. This tax lien, being a legal item, has hit your score big time. So, if you dropped less than 100 points, consider yourselves quite fortunate. Two months ago is pretty recent. Pick yourselves up off the floor and go get it released, have the Release of Lien recorded and send that to the bureaus. You've taken the hit for a legal, might as well start the time clock for the reporting SOL.

Continue with all your other strategies for raising that score and know that 12 months from now, your situation will be a lot better than it is now. Good luck!

[Ravenous Wolf]

I had the exact same thing.

I had an “estimated” state tax lien for 1200 clams.

What I really paid was like about a hundred clams but that is totally irrelevant because that was on the lien sent to the courthouse.

I have spilled a lot of ink on this board about my tax lien. It took me almost two years to get them removed. The last got removed only six month before it came off. Even those six months were helpful.

However, even six years STILL has a profound effect. Often times, the factors on credit denials stated “public record”.

Here is how to get it off of your credit report or at least how it worked with me.

First, here is what you DON’T do. Do not say that this tax lien is confused with someone else’s credit report. I tried that and Experian immediately split my file.

Now, you have to take a trip to your county courthouse. You need to do that right away. You need to get a copy of that tax lien. There should be two documents. One will be the original tax lien. The second ought to be the RELEASE of Tax Lien.

When you have both of those documents sitting right in front of you, scour the entire lien. Read it WORD for WORD and look for ANY errors, misspellings, or any kind of technicality. Anything that is possibly wrong can help you.

Next, keep in mind that there are three basic things needed to identify you. One is your name, address, and your SSN and it has to be absolutely correct for both documents.

NAME

Like is the name on your driver’s license/birth certificate Charles but does the lien have Chuck, Charlie, The Hammer, etc. Is there any technicality that you can find with the name on both documents.

ADDRESS

What is the address for both documents? For me, the original lien had an address that was deleted a long time ago. And I used that to my full advantage. I argued that every step of the way in stating that this bogus address is in no way associated with me.

SSN

I didn’t use this until the last few disputes, which worked very effectively for me. On the ID box, it had my SSN as 123-45-6789-1. With my disputes, I made a big stink that this lien did not belong to me because nowhere on this document was my SSN. Experian wrote back to me stating that the ID box “was” my SSN. I made a copy of that letter and pointed that 123-45-6789-1 is not my SSN because of the –1. Experian then deleted the tax lien.

Bottom line is that if you cannot find a technicality then you have to use the Name, Address, and SSN to your best advantage.

CSC/EQ was the easiest. EX was next. And then TU finally removed it six months before it was scheduled to fall off.