@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.
Personal Cards: Amex Plat | Amex Delta Res | CSR | Citi AA Exec Business Cards: Ink+ | Amex BGR
@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.
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. 
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
