topic Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review in Credit Cards

HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

anm688 — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 22:56:38 GMT

It finally happened. I'm being financially reviewed by American Express to see if my income justifies my spending.

Trigger of AmEx Financial Review: Spending $75K this month.

Here is my problem with their process. The representative said I cannot provide bank statements as my savings grace, and that they can only do it by pulling my IRS tax returns.

Has anyone else survived a financial review with a low taxable income and high spending? Any recommendations?

NOTE: I pay off my AmEx card in full every month. So they should see a history of me being able to cover my expenses.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 22:56:29 GMT

@anm688 wrote:
It finally happened. I'm being financially reviewed by AmEx to see if my income justifies my spending.

Trigger of FR: Spending $75K this month.

Here is my problem with their process. The representative said I cannot provide bank statements as my savings grace, and that they can only do it by pulling my IRS tax returns.

Has anyone else survived a financial review with a low taxable income and high spending? Any recommendations?

NOTE: I pay off my AmEx card in full every month. So they should see a history of me being able to cover my expenses.

There's not much you can do but submit the tax forms. If you don't they'll just close your accounts. If you submit the forms and your income is less than what you claimed when you applied for the card they'll either shut down your account or more than likely put a hard spending limit on your cards.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 23:22:03 GMT

You spent $75K this month?! C'mon dude/dudette.. If you're going to be pulling some shennanigans, at least be smart about it lol..

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

anm688 — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 23:26:48 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
You spent $75K this month?! C'mon dude/dudette.. If you're going to be pulling some shennanigans, at least be smart about it lol..

LOL. I know it looks odd. BUT...I payoff everything I spend within 1 week. I never carry a balance.

And I've already paid off $68,000 of the June expenses. I'm going to pay my final $7K this next week.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 23:29:59 GMT

@anm688 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
You spent $75K this month?! C'mon dude/dudette.. If you're going to be pulling some shennanigans, at least be smart about it lol..
LOL. I know it looks odd. BUT...I payoff everything I spend within 1 week. I never carry a balance.

If you have the money to pay $75K a month, then you should have no issues when you submit you tax returns. They want to know if your income supports your spending.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 23:44:38 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@anm688 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
You spent $75K this month?! C'mon dude/dudette.. If you're going to be pulling some shennanigans, at least be smart about it lol..
LOL. I know it looks odd. BUT...I payoff everything I spend within 1 week. I never carry a balance.
If you have the money to pay $75K a month, then you should have no issues when you submit you tax returns. They want to know if your income supports your spending.

Right. So what is the issue? e.g.

a) You have financial resources that don't show up on your tax return such as inheritence (or money from drug running, whatever!)

b Spending is reimbursed by someone else, such as an employer

c) Spending is MS

d) or something else

If the income on your tax return is not enough to cover spending, you will need some explanation!

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 00:17:55 GMT

What are you spending $75K on in a single month? Is this business spending on a personal card?

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

trant3 — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 00:39:28 GMT

I see you have 5 amex cards. Best thing to do is submit the 4506t form and let it ride. Good luck!

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 00:45:39 GMT

it's quite possible to spend 75k a month on a 100k salary in a business. In many cases one cand spend 75K to make 10% of that money. You should have business business tax return that show gross income and net income. If your gross income justifies your monthly expenses (regardless of net inclome) you should be good to go!

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 01:13:56 GMT

I think we are all under the impression that this is a personal charge card and not business.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 01:29:24 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I think we are all under the impression that this is a personal charge card and not business.

I'm pretty sure that this is a business card. He has both the business Platinum and business PRG.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 01:41:37 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I think we are all under the impression that this is a personal charge card and not business.
I'm pretty sure that this is a business card. He has both the business Platinum and business PRG.

The sig line images are of personal cards.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 01:58:24 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I think we are all under the impression that this is a personal charge card and not business.
I'm pretty sure that this is a business card. He has both the business Platinum and business PRG.
The sig line images are of personal cards.

I'm going by a previous post in approvals where he said he was approved for both.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

anm688 — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 02:19:15 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
What are you spending $75K on in a single month? Is this business spending on a personal card?

To clarify. I have 9 AmEx cards currently. Two are business. Seven are personal. My 75k in spending is across four of the cards: Personal Platinum, Biz Platinum, Personal Gold, Business Gold.

I'm just surprised that they won't look at anything except IRS records.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

redpat — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 02:30:21 GMT

@anm688 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
What are you spending $75K on in a single month? Is this business spending on a personal card?
To clarify. I have 9 AmEx cards currently. Two are business. Seven are personal. My 75k in spending is across four of the cards: Personal Platinum, Biz Platinum, Personal Gold, Business Gold.

I'm just surprised that they won't look at anything except IRS records.

They go right to the source of personal returns and business returns to make sure everything is on the up and up.

You have no way around it unfortunately.

There is no grey here, it's the black and white of the returns.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

core — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 07:07:59 GMT

@redpat wrote:
They go right to the source of personal returns and business returns to make sure everything is on the up and up.

You have no way around it unfortunately.

There is no grey here, it's the black and white of the returns.

Taxable income is not the same thing as income. And I'll submit that when government is involved, there's absolutely nothing that's "black and white".

I feel for you OP... sorry this happened. There are hundreds of ways this could happen to other business owners too, even if they are 100% following tax laws. This is precisely why Amex FRs are a load of bull. I don't have many problems with the privacy aspect. I do have a huge problem with them assuming that taxable income == income.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

redpat — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 11:56:48 GMT

@core wrote:
@redpat wrote:
They go right to the source of personal returns and business returns to make sure everything is on the up and up.

You have no way around it unfortunately.

There is no grey here, it's the black and white of the returns.
Taxable income is not the same thing as income. And I'll submit that when government is involved, there's absolutely nothing that's "black and white".

I feel for you OP... sorry this happened. There are hundreds of ways this could happen to other business owners too, even if they are 100% following tax laws. This is precisely why Amex FRs are a load of bull. I don't have many problems with the privacy aspect. I do have a huge problem with them assuming that taxable income == income.

Business returns shows gross revenues and expenses associated with the business and therefore would give Amex the ability to see the spend needed to run the business.

So if your business has revenues and expenses to support that spend then you should be fine. .

You may think it's not black and white but in their world it is.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

core — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 12:00:20 GMT

@redpat wrote:
Business returns shows gross revenue and expenses associated with the business and therefore would give Amex the ability to see the spend needed to run the business.

You may think it's not black and white but in their world it is.

Sure, Amex may see lots of expenses on his transcript and that might justify a large amount of spend on his business cards. But when his own taxable income says $0, what do you think is going to happen to that guy after he honestly put down say $95k on his initial Amex application? He'd be lucky to escape with any cards left at all.

Yes, I agree, in their world they see it as black and white. He "lied" about his income (according to them). That's the PROBLEM... It's not black and white, but they want to believe it is.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

UncleB — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 14:35:19 GMT

I could be wrong, but from previous threads about the infamous FR it always seemed they weren't too concerned with business expenses as long as they weren't too out of proportion with the member's income and resources.

From what I've read, Amex seems to be most concerned with making sure people aren't artificially inflating their spending to earn increased rewards or (more commonly) using their cards for purchases that they might not reasonably be able to pay back if something were to go wrong with their business or other reimbursement.

It's no secret that many people will work a lot harder to take care of debts that they feel are legitimately theirs, versus debts that were run up by a family member or were left unpaid when a business went under. I'm not saying that everybody is like this, but many are... I suspect it's also the reason Amex is said to be sensitive to when an AU card regularly charges significantly more than a primary card.

In the case of AUs, if a balance run up by the AU is 'significant' when compared to a primary member's own spending and something were to go "wrong" with the payment the imperative to pay back the debt is likely to be perceived differently by the primary than if the debt had been run up by them personally (again, generally speaking). In other words, many people are quicker to walk away from a debt that they didn't personally run up, or that they feel somebody else should pay versus a bill they ran up themselves.

Back to this thread... to the OP, I hope the FR goes well for you. There have been a few I've read about that went surprisingly well, and I'm hoping that's your experience also. Please let us know how it turns out.

Re: HELP: Surviving AmEx Financial Review

Uncle_Money — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 16:48:37 GMT

Unfortunaley, there's absolutely no way around this. You'll need to consent for them to pull the returns or you'll lose your accounts.

I had this happen to me a while back. Nothing scary about it at all. I have 4 accounts with Amex; 2 personal and 2 business. In my case, I have high income and high expenses. They temporarily gave me a hard limit but eventually they lifted it, put me back to no pre set spending and reinstated my extended payment option.

What's interesting is that I noticed they lifted it when my debt to income ratio plummeted to around 15%. Since Amex is known for soft pulling quite frequently it might not have been triggered due to your high spending. I never had an issue with that. Have you ran up any balances with other creditors that may have caused your debt ratio to skyrocket? This would be a trigger as well as any new blemishes added to your reports. Additionally, any late payments will also trigger a FR.

My advice is to simply roll with it because you have no choice but to comply. Give the consent and they'll let you know the outcome. If you have a solid payment history with them, your most likely worst case scenario is a hard limit. This will stay for at least six months and will continuously be reviewed until they feel you're eligible to go back to no pre set spending. Good luck and post the outcome!

Uncle Money