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Close Your Business But Protect Yourself

Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” and Chapter 13 “adjustment of debts” can prevent you from harm when you decide to close down your business.


My blog post last week explained how to save your sole proprietorship business through a Chapter 13 case. But now let’s assume that you’ve instead made up your mind to close down that business. And let’s also assume that you need bankruptcy relief because of the unmanageable amount of debts you are personally liable for.

Many, many considerations come into play in deciding on your best course of action, but let’s focus here today on two main ones—assets and debts—as we consider three options: 1) a “no asset” Chapter 7 case, 2) an “asset” Chapter 7 one, and 3) a Chapter 13 case.

“No Asset” Chapter 7 Gets You a Fast Fresh Start

Once you decide that your business is not worth keeping alive, you may just want to clean up after it as quickly as possible. For that a “straight bankruptcy” may well be the best way to go.

If everything that you own—from both your business and you individually—falls within the allowed asset exemptions, then your case will more likely be relatively simple and quick. You will have a “no asset” case—one in which you keep everything you own and nothing goes to the Chapter 7 trustee to liquidate and distribute among your creditors.

A “no asset” Chapter 7 case is usually completed from start to finish in three or four months. And if none of your assets are within the reach of the trustee, there is nothing to liquidate and then distribute among your creditors. Because the liquidation and distribution process can take many additional months, avoiding that usually shortens and simplifies a Chapter 7 case greatly.

However, this assumes that all your debts can be handled appropriately in a Chapter 7 case. Specifically, the debts that you want to discharge (write off) would in fact be discharged. And those that would not be discharged are ones that you are able and willing to pay. The debts you want to pay may include secured debts like vehicle loans and mortgages; debts you are able and willing to pay—after discharging the rest of your debts—may include certain taxes, support payments, and maybe student loans.

Asset Chapter 7 Case as a Convenient Liquidation Procedure

If you do have some assets that are not exempt—not protected from the trustee—Chapter 7 may still be a good option. Assume that those unprotected assets are ones that you can do without—and maybe even are happy to be rid of, like assets from your former business that you no longer need. Letting the bankruptcy trustee collect and sell them and distribute the proceeds among the creditors instead of you going through that hassle may be a sensible, convenient, and fair way of putting your business behind you.

That may especially be true if you have some “priority” debts that the trustee would likely pay out of the proceeds of sale of your unprotected assets. For example, if you owed child or spousal support arrearage, or recent income taxes, those would likely be paid ahead of your other creditors. Your Chapter 7 trustee would be paying debts that you would have had to pay anyway, and is doing so out of the proceeds of sale of assets that you don’t need. Not a bad deal.

Chapter 13 for Flexibly Addressing Special Types of Debts

Chapter 7 does not deal well with certain important kinds of debts. However, Chapter 13 gives you a 3-to-5-year program to pay all or part of those debts while you are protected from your creditors.  

An example of an important kind of debt for owners of recently closed businesses is income taxes. Chapter 13 provides a way to potentially discharge (write-off) older taxes, pay off more recent taxes while being protected from the IRS and/or state taxing authority, and deal favorably with tax liens.

Chapter 13 can often also protect otherwise unprotected assets, for example the closed business’ assets that you now need as your tools or equipment for employment in the same field.

In the right circumstances Chapter 13 can save you thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, while giving you protection from and a better way of dealing with important kinds of creditors. 

 

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Save Your Sole Proprietorship Business through Chapter 13

Chapter 13 can greatly reduce both your business and personal monthly debt service while you continued to run your business.

 

“Adjustment of Debts of an Individual with Regular Income”

That is the formal name given to Chapter 13 of Title 11—the U. S. Bankruptcy Code.

As the word “Individual” indicates, you must be a person to file a Chapter 13 case—a corporation cannot file one. (This also applies to a limited liability company (LLC) and other similar types of legal business entities.)

But if you have a business which you operate as a sole proprietorship, you and your business can file a Chapter 13 case together.

To explain, if you (or you and your spouse) own a business that is operated in your own name, then, unlike a corporation  that is treated as a legal “person” separate from you, your sole proprietorship business and you are treated as a single legal entity.

The assets of your sole proprietor business are simply considered your personal assets. The debts of your business are simply your debts.

This is true even if your business is operated not under your own individual name(s) but rather under an assumed business name, and you are doing business under that name. You are likely operating as a sole proprietorship if you have not gone through the formalities of creating a corporation, a limited liability company, or other such legal business entity.

Chapter 13 Help Your Sole Proprietorship Business in 5 Major Ways

1) Chapter 13 addresses both your business and personal financial problems in one legal and practical package.  You are personally liable on all debts of your sole proprietorship business, as well as, of course, your individual debts. So as long as you qualify for Chapter 13 otherwise, you can simultaneously resolve both your business and personal debts.

2) Chapter 13 stops both business and personal creditors from suing you, placing liens on your assets, and shutting down your business. The “automatic stay” imposed by the filing of your Chapter 13 case stops ALL your creditors from pursuing you, including both business and personal ones. Your personal creditors are prevented from hurting your business, and your business creditors are prevented from taking your personal assets.

3) Chapter 13 enables you to keep whatever business assets you need to keep operating. If you do not file a bankruptcy, and one of either your business or personal creditors gets a judgment against you, it could try to seize your business assets.  Also, if you filed a Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy,” under many circumstances you could not continue operating your business. However, Chapter 13 is specifically designed to allow you to keep what you need and continue operating your business.

4) Chapter 13 gives you the power to retain crucial business and personal collateral. If you are behind either on business or personal loans which are secured by either business or personal collateral, Chapter 13 will stop the repossession of the collateral. Then it will give you ways to keep collateral that you would otherwise lose, and often under much better payment terms. You will often be given the opportunity to lower the monthly payments, or at least be given more time to catch up on your late payments. In certain limited situations—such as some judgment liens and some second mortgages on your home—the liens can be gotten rid of altogether.

5) Chapter 13 can solve both business and personal tax problems. Business owners in financial trouble are generally also in tax trouble. Chapter 13 gives business owners time to pay tax debts that cannot be discharged (permanently written off), all the while keeping the IRS and other tax agencies at bay. Chapter 13 usually stops the accruing of additional penalties and interest, enabling the tax to be paid off much more quickly. Tax liens can be handled especially well. At the end of a successful Chapter 13 case you will have either discharged or paid off all your tax debts, and will be tax-free.

 

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Another Five Tremendous Tools to Save Your Home through Chapter 13

These additional 5 tools, especially in combination, can tackle and defeat your mortgage and other home-debt problems.

 

 In my last blog post, I gave you five huge ways that Chapter 13 can save your home. I’ll summarize those briefly here, and then give you and explain another five of them.

Here are the first five. Under Chapter 13 you can:

1. … stretch out payments for catching up on back mortgage payments, as much as five years.

2.   … cur or erase your other debt obligations so that you can afford your mortgage payments.

3. … prevent income tax liens, child and spousal support liens, and judgment liens from every attaching to your home.

4. … pay the debts that cannot be discharged (legally written off) in bankruptcy while being protected from those creditors putting liens on or enforcing liens against your home.

5. … get rid of debts owed to creditors which could otherwise put and enforce liens on your home.

And here are today’s additional five Chapter 13 benefits for your home:

6. … avoid paying all or some of your second (or third) mortgage.

This is the powerful “mortgage strip” that can save you hundreds of dollars a month and sometimes many tens of thousands of dollars over the time you live in your home.

If—and only if—the value of your home is no more than the balance of your first mortgage, your second mortgage can be treated as an unsecured creditor. If so, you can “strip” that second mortgage off the title of your home. This means you can stop making the monthly payments on it. The entire amount that you owe is added to your pool of other unsecured creditors, which are all paid only as much as you can afford to pay over the life of your three-to-five-year Chapter 13 case. And then at the end of the case whatever has not been paid is completely discharged at the end of the case.

Although property values have increased in the last couple of years, there are still millions of homes “under water”—owing more debt than they are worth—and many of these are worth less than their first mortgage.  If this applies to you, it may be reason enough to do a Chapter 13 case. You can usually end up paying only pennies on the dollar—or sometimes even nothing—on your second (or third) mortgage. This leaves your home both much easier to hang on to and much closer to not being “under water.”

7. … get more time to pay property tax arrearage, while protecting your home from both tax and mortgage foreclosure.

If you have fallen behind on your property taxes, this creates two problems. First, you risk losing your home to a property tax foreclosure by the county or whatever other governmental entity is collecting the tax. Second, since your mortgage lender requires you to keep current on your property taxes and considers you falling behind as an independent violation of your mortgage agreement, this gives your lender a separate reason for IT to foreclose on your home.

So Chapter 13 gives you time to catch on your property taxes while both protecting you from the property taxing entity itself and preventing your mortgage lender from using your unpaid property taxes as a separate reason for foreclosing on your home.

8. … prioritize paying many home-related debts—such as property taxes, support liens, utility and construction liens—that you need to and often wish you were able to pay.

Neither Chapter 7 nor Chapter 13 enables you to simply get rid of these special kinds of liens on your home. But Chapter 13 allows—indeed often requires—you to pay them in full ahead of most of your other creditors. This often benefits you because it allows you to focus your limited financial resources on paying those debts which will preserve and add equity to your home.

9. … get rid of judgment liens, so that they no longer attach to your home.  

If a creditor sues you and you don’t respond by the deadline to do so, the creditor will get a judgment—a court determination that you owe whatever the creditor’s lawsuit says you owe. Most of the time that judgment creates a judgment lien against your home. Depending on a number of factors like the value of your home, the amount of your mortgage(s) and other liens, the amount of the judgment lien, and the amount of the homestead exemption that you are entitled to, bankruptcy will allow you to “void”—get rid of—that judgment lien. This is very important because otherwise even if the underlying debt is discharged, the judgment lien would survive the bankruptcy, causing you to still have to pay the debt eventually, in part or in full.   

If you qualify for judgment lien “avoidance” it can also be done under a Chapter 7 case, but it is often better in a Chapter 13 case when used in combination with these other tools.

10. .. sell your house without the pressure of a foreclosure sale, either just a short time after filing the Chapter 13 case, or sometimes even three, four years later.

If you are close to selling your home, or have just started the process but want to sell as soon as you can, Chapter 7 usually buys you very little time in avoiding a pending foreclosure. It gives you very little leverage or flexibility. In these situations, Chapter 13 will usually buy you more time to sell while preventing foreclosure. And, especially if you have some equity in your home, it will give you more payment flexibility.

Or if you want to sell your home a few years from now, Chapter 13 can give you some very valuable flexibility in catching up on a mortgage arrearage. You may be planning on downsizing once your children finish high school or you reach some other important life event. Or you may want to wait until property values increase over the next couple years. Under Chapter 13 you can often put off catching up on some or all of your mortgage arrearage until that anticipated sale date, making it more financially feasible to keep your home in the meantime.

 

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Choosing the Right Solution in a Closed-Business Bankruptcy Case

Whether to file under Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 depends largely on your business assets, taxes, and other nondischargeable debts.

 

Hoping to File a Chapter 7 “Straight Bankruptcy”

Once you’ve closed down your business and are considering bankruptcy, it would be understandable if you preferred to file under Chapter 7 instead of under a Chapter 13 “adjustment of debts.”

After all you’ve been through the last few years trying to keep your business afloat, you just want a fresh, clean start, as quickly as possible. You likely feel like just putting the debts behind you. The last thing you likely want is to do is stretch things out for the next three to five years that a Chapter 13 case would usually take.

Likely Can File Under Chapter 7 Under the “Means Test”

The “means test” determines whether, with your income and expenses, you can file a Chapter 7 case. In my last blog I described how you can avoid the “means test” altogether if more than half of your debts are business debts instead of consumer debts.

But even if that does not apply to you, the “means test” will still not likely be a problem if you closed down your business recently. That’s because the period of income that counts for the “means test” is the six full calendar months before your bankruptcy case is filed. An about-to-fail business usually isn’t generating much income. So, there is a very good chance that your income for “means test” purposes is less than the published median income amount for your family size, in your state. If your prior 6-month income is less than the median amount, by that fact alone you’ve passed the means test and qualified for Chapter 7.

Three Factors about Filing Chapter 7 vs. 13—Business Assets, Taxes, and Other Non-Discharged Debt

The following three factors seem to come up all the time when deciding between filing Chapter 7 or 13:

1. Business assets: A Chapter 7 case is either “asset” or “no asset.” In a “no asset” case, the Chapter 7 trustee decides—usually quite quickly—that all of your assets are exempt (protected by exemptions) and so cannot be taken from you to pay creditors.

If you had a recently closed business, there more likely are assets that are not exempt and are worth the trustee’s effort to collect and liquidate. If you have such collectable business assets, discuss with your attorney where the money from the proceeds of the Chapter 7 trustee’s sale of those assets would likely go, and whether that result is in your best interest compared to what would happen to those assets in a Chapter 13 case.

2. Taxes: It seems like every person who has recently closed a business and is considering bankruptcy has tax debts. Although some taxes can be discharged in a Chapter 7 case, many cannot. Especially in situations in which a lot of taxes would not be discharged, Chapter 13 is often a better way to deal with them. Which option is better depends on the precise kind of tax—personal income tax, employee withholding tax, sales tax—and on a series of other factors such as when the tax became due, whether a tax return was filed, if so when, and whether a tax lien was recorded.

3. Other nondischargeable debts: Bankruptcies involving former businesses get more than the usual amount of challenges by creditors. These challenges are usually by creditors trying to avoid the discharge (legal write-off) of its debts based on allegations of fraud or misrepresentation. The business owner may be accused of acting in some fraudulent fashion against a former business partner, his or her business landlord, or some other major creditor.  These kinds of disputes can greatly complicate a bankruptcy case, regardless whether occurring under Chapter 7 or 13. But in some situations Chapter 13 could give you certain legal and tactical advantages over Chapter 7.

These three factors will be the topics of my next three blogs. After reviewing them you will have a much better idea whether your business bankruptcy case should be in a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13.

 

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Close Down Your Small Business, Get a Fresh Financial Start

Closing down a business can leave you with huge debts and no income to pay them. Bankruptcy may be necessary, and be easier than you think.

 

A Business Bankruptcy Means a Messy One?

A bankruptcy cleaning up the financial fallout from a closed business can be more complicated than a consumer bankruptcy case. But is not necessarily so.

In the next few blog posts I will show how a business bankruptcy can be quite a simple and effective solution.

Today I present one way a business bankruptcy can actually be easier than a consumer one. 

How so? Because under certain conditions a business bankruptcy case can avoid the Chapter 7 “means test,” allowing you to legally write off (“discharge”) all your debts quickly.

The Purpose of the “Means Test”

The point of the means test is to require people who have the means to pay a meaningful amount to their creditors over a reasonable period of time to in fact do so. They aren’t allowed to simply discharge their debts.

Essentially this disqualifies people who do not pass the means test from going through a Chapter 7 case, which allows a quick discharge of most debts. Instead they must go through Chapter 13, which generally requires them to pay creditors all that they can afford to pay them over a 3-to-5-year period.

The Challenge of Passing the Means Test

To pass the means test requires either having a relatively low income (no more than the published median income amount for the person’s state and family size) or having enough allowed expenses so that little or no “disposable income” is left over. Again, otherwise you will be stuck in a 3-to-5-year Chapter 13 payment plan.

In many scenarios, a former business owner needing bankruptcy relief would not be able to pass the means test and so would have to go through Chapter 13. For example:

  • If, after closing his business, the owner of that business gets a well-paying job before filing bankruptcy, the income from that job may be larger than the “median income” applicable to her state and family size.
  • If the business was operated by one spouse while the other continued working and earned a good income, that employed spouse’s income alone may bump the couple above their applicable “median income” amount, thereby not passing the “means test.”
  • A former business owner who now earns more than median income can’t deduct monthly payments to secured creditors on business collateral she is surrendering—vehicles and equipment, for example—or for other business expenses, such as rent on the former business premises. This reduces the likelihood that she will have enough allowed expenses to pass the “means test.”

Skip the “Means Test” in Business Bankruptcies

The good news is that you do not have to pass the means test at all if your “debts are primarily consumer debts.” (Section 707(b)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code.) So if your debts are primarily business debts—more than 50%–you avoid the means test altogether.

Let’s be clear about the difference between these two types of debts. A “consumer debt is a “debt incurred by an individual primarily for a personal, family, or household purpose.” (Section 101(8).)  The focus is on the intent at the time the debt was incurred. So, for example, if you had taken out a second mortgage on your home for the clear purpose of financing your business, that second mortgage would likely be considered a business debt for this purpose.

Certainly there are times when the line between a business and consumer debt is not clear. Given what may be riding on this—the ability to discharge all or most of your debts in about four month under Chapter 7 vs. paying on them for up to 5 years under Chapter 13—be sure to discuss this thoroughly with your attorney. Find out if you can avoid the means test under this “primarily business debts” exception. 

 

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The Expenses Step of the Chapter 7 “Means Test”

If your income is higher than “median income,” you may still file a Chapter 7 case by going through the expenses step of the means test.

 

The Easy, Income Step of the Means Test

The last couple of blog posts have covered the first step of the means test, the income step. It says that if your “income”—as that term is uniquely defined in this law—is no more than the published median amount for your state of residence and for your size of family, you can skip the rest of the means test, and you generally qualify for a Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” case. You don’t have to go through the rest of the means test.

The Admittedly Complicated, Expenses Step of the Means Test

If on the other hand your “income” is greater than the median income amount applicable to your state and family size, then you have to go through the detailed expenses step to see whether you can participate in a Chapter 7 case.

The Challenge of the Means Test

The concept behind the means test is pretty straightforward: people who have the means to pay a meaningful amount to their creditors over a reasonable period of time should be required to do so. But putting that concept into law resulted in an amazingly complicated set of rules.

These expense rules are detailed and rigid because Congress was trying to be objective. The assumption was debtors would just inflate their anticipated expenses to show that they had no money left over for their creditors—no “means” to pay them anything.

One of the complications is that the allowed expenses include some based on your stated actual expense amounts, while others are based on standard amounts. The standard amounts are based on Internal Revenue Service tables of expenses, but some of those standards are national, some vary by state, and some even vary among specific metropolitan areas within a state. There are even some expenses which are partly standard and partly actual (certain components of transportation expenses).

There are also rules about when to allow and how to determine the allowed amounts for secured debt payments (vehicle, mortgage) and for “priority debts” (income taxes, accrued child support).

If You Have Disposable Income

After all that, if after subtracting all the allowed expenses from your “income” you have some money left over, whether you can be in Chapter 7 depends on the amount of that money and how that compares to the amount of your debts:

  1. If the amount left over—the “monthly disposable income”—is no more than $125, then you still pass the means test and qualify for Chapter 7.
  2. If your “monthly disposable income” is between $125 and $208, then apply the following formula: multiply that amount by 60, and compare that to the total amount of your regular (not “priority”) unsecured debts. If the multiplied total is less than 25% of those debts, then you still pass the means test and qualify for Chapter 7.
  3. If after applying the above formula you can pay 25% or more of those debts, OR if your “monthly disposable income” is more than $208, then you do NOT pass the means test, UNLESS you can show “special circumstances,” such as “a serious medical condition or a call or order to active duty in the Armed Forces.”

THAT’s Complicated!

True enough. So you certainly want to have an attorney who fully understands these often confounding rules and how they are being interpreted by the local bankruptcy judges and the pertinent appeals courts.

If you don’t pass the means test you will instead likely end up in a 3-to-5-year Chapter 13 case. Not only would that mean getting full relief from your debts years later than under Chapter 7, with a similar delay in rebuilding your credit, you may well also end up paying thousands, or even tens of thousands, more dollars to your creditors. It’s definitely worth going through the effort to find a competent bankruptcy attorney to help you, whenever possible, find a way to pass the means test. 

 

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Keeping All that You Own in Bankruptcy

Can you really keep everything you own if you file bankruptcy?

 

The Answer: Usually Yes.

1) Yes, usually you can keep those possessions that you own free and clear—meaning you don’t owe any money to a creditor which has a lien on those possessions. 

2) Yes, usually you can keep those possessions which you don’t own free and clear—meaning you owe money to a creditor which has a lien on them—IF you want to keep them, AND are willing and able to meet certain conditions.

In today’s blog post we’ll address the first part of the above answer. We’ll get to the second part in the near future.

Keep What You Own Because of Property Exemptions, and Possibly Because of Chapter 13

Most people who file bankruptcy can keep what they own for two reasons: 1) property exemptions and 2) Chapter 13 protections. In a nutshell, property exemptions designate what types and amounts of assets you can keep; if you have any type or amount of property that isn’t covered, Chapter 13 adds an additional layer of protection.

The Core Principle of Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

In a Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy,” your debts are discharged—legally written off forever—in return for you giving your unprotected assets to your creditors (as represented by the bankruptcy trustee). BUT, for most people, all or most of their assets ARE protected, or “exempt.”

As a result, debtors in Chapter 7 generally get a discharge of their debts without having to give any of their assets, or only a select set of assets, to the trustee.

Property Exemptions Aren’t As Simple As May Seem

  • The Bankruptcy Code has a set of federal exemptions, and each state also has its own exemptions. In some states you have a choice between using the federal exemptions or the state ones, while in other states you are only permitted to use the state exemptions. When you have a choice, choosing which of the two exemption schemes is better for you is often not clear and you need an experienced attorney to help with this.
  • If you have moved relatively recently from another state, you may have to use the exemption rules of your prior state. Because different state’s exemption types and amounts can differ widely, thousands of dollars can be at stake depending on when your bankruptcy case is filed.
  • Even once you know which set of exemptions apply to you, whether all of your assets are covered by an exemption and protected is often not clear. The exemption statues in many instances were written long ago using outdated language, often interpreted by the courts as to their current meaning. Plus the local trustees often have unwritten rules about how they interpret the exemption categories in practice. As a result, determining whether an asset is exempt or not involves much more than merely comparing a list of your assets against a list of the applicable exemptions.

So navigating through exemptions can be much more complicated than it looks, and is one of the most important services provided by your bankruptcy attorney.

If You Do Own Non-Exempt Assets

Most people who file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case lose nothing to the trustee because everything they own is exempt.  But what if you DO own one or more assets which do not fit any of the available exemptions? If you want to keep those assets, they can often be protected through a Chapter 13 case.  We’ll cover that in our next blog post.

 

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U. S. Bankruptcy Laws Took Very Long to Get Off the Ground

The Constitution empowered Congress to “pass uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies,” which then took more than 100 years to do so.


  • The United State of America started its existence without a national bankruptcy law, and in fact without the ability to have one. The Continental Congress established the United States with its founding constitution consisting of the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union,” drafted in 1776-1777. Not ratified by the 13 states until 1781, the Articles of Confederation did not provide for a nationwide bankruptcy system.
  • The American Revolutionary War ended in 1782, the U.S. Constitution was drafted in 1787 and was ratified by the states in 1789.  It did allow for, yet did not of itself create a national bankruptcy law. It merely empowered Congress to “pass uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies”.
  • The Constitution may have thus empowered Congress, but Congress did not do a very good job at this for nearly half our nation’s history. Three different times during the 1800s, a federal bankruptcy law was passed in direct reaction to a financial “panic.” But these federal laws were each repealed after the financial crises were over.
  • During the long periods when there was no nationwide law in effect, the states developed a patchwork of bankruptcy and debtor-creditor laws. But these local laws became more and more cumbersome as commerce became ever more interstate.
  • Finally, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Act of 1898. This is the first one that was not quickly repealed, and lasted 80 years.  This law was inspired by commercial creditors, to help in the collection of debts. However, it included the following very important debtor-friendly provisions: most debts became dischargeable, and creditors no longer had to be paid a certain minimum percentage of their debts.
  • This Bankruptcy Act of 1898 was amended many times, significantly in 1938 in reaction to the Great Depression. Among other things that 1938 amendment added the “chapter XIII” wage earners’ plans, the predecessor to today’s Chapter 13s.
  • The 1978 Bankruptcy Reform Act, the result of a decade of study and debate, gave us the Bankruptcy Code. It has been amended every few years since then, most significantly in 2005 with BAPCPA, the so–called Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. 
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Priority Debts in Chapter 13 Bankruptcy

Chapter 13 can be a stronger and more flexible tool for dealing with priority debts than Chapter 7.

The last blog explained how sometimes Chapter 7 can be a good tool to pay or reduce your priority debts. Priority debts are ones specially designated in bankruptcy law to be treated better than you ordinary debts.

For consumers, the most common priority debts are back child/spousal support payments and taxes. But as the last blog showed, you need to have a relatively unusual “asset” Chapter 7 case, meaning that you need to have an asset or assets that is not protected—not exempt—that you would surrender to the trustee.

It helps if when that asset is sold by the trustee the sale proceeds would be enough to pay off your priority debts, after paying any costs of sale (such as a broker’s commission) and the trustee’s fee.

Chapter 13 is much more likely to apply to your circumstances if you owe a bunch of priority debts.

Here are some ways that it is better than Chapter 7, and better than trying to pay your priority taxes or back support without any bankruptcy.

1. Be protected from the priority creditors: Tax authorities and state support agencies have been provided by law with extraordinarily aggressive collection powers against you. These often include the ability to seize your assets; garnish your wages, bank accounts, and business receivables without additional court proceedings; suspend your driving and occupational/professional licenses, and even hunting and fishing licenses.

Some of these collection efforts can even continue when you file a Chapter 7 case, and all can continue as soon as your Chapter 7 is completed, giving you just a three month or so break. In contrast, Chapter 13 stops virtually all of these collection efforts, so long as you comply with the terms of your payment plan, as well as keep current going forward.

2. Stop further accumulating interest and penalties: Usually in a Chapter 13 case, the interest and penalties on priority debt stops being added, and then is discharged at your successful completion of your case. If you have large income tax debt, this can significantly reduce the amount you would pay.

3. Get a more sensible budget: Your monthly obligation under Chapter 13 tends to be based on more realistic expenses than what the IRS or your support enforcement agency will allow..

4. Allows you to favor the priority debt over other debt: Usually you are able to and indeed must pay your priority debt ahead of and often instead of your “general unsecured creditors.” So you are able to concentrate your financial efforts on paying off the debts that are usually in your self-interest to pay anyway.

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Business Tax Debts-the Myths and the Truth

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Bankruptcy can often help you deal effectively with business taxes. Here are three myths, and the truth exploding them.



Myth #1: Bankruptcy can’t write off taxes.




Truth: Some taxes can’t be written off. But many others CAN be through either a Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” or a Chapter 13 “adjustment of debts.” This depends on a number of rather complicated factors, including the following:



  • whether you filed a tax return for the tax year at issue
  • if so, when that tax return was filed
  • how long it’s been since that tax was first due
  • whether and when you asked to get a compromise of that tax
  • whether you tried to evade that tax in any way



So any particular tax you may owe has to be analyzed carefully with your attorney. But don’t start with the assumption that your taxes can’t be written off, or dealt with in some other favorable way.




Myth #2: Business taxes particularly can’t be written off.




Truth: Income that you pay yourself from your business is generally treated as your personal income. And particularly if your business is a sole proprietorship or a partnership, then your share of the business’ income (after expenses) flow through to you as personal income.




If your business is a corporation, then your salary or any other form of income you receive from the business is generally treated as personal income. The income tax on these various sources of “business” income can be written off just like any personal income tax from a conventional employer, depending on the same factors listed above.




If any of your taxes can’t be discharged in either a Chapter 7 or 13 case, Chapter 13 would nevertheless give you 3-to-5 years to pay those taxes, while under the protection of the IRS (and any applicable state tax authorities). Also, usually all interest and penalties which would otherwise have accumulated during this time would be waived, as long as you finished the case successfully.




Furthermore you can often pay less–and maybe even nothing—to your other creditors, allowing instead for your money to go to pay off the taxes. So at the completion of your case you would owe nothing in either taxes or any other debts.




Myth #3: Bankruptcy particularly does not help with unpaid employee withholding taxes that as an employer you were supposed to turn over to the IRS or state.




Truth: Although bankruptcy never discharges this category of taxes, in a Chapter 13 case these withholding taxes are basically treated just like other taxes that can’t be discharged, as discussed immediately above.




So you would have years to pay off those withholding taxes, all while being protected from the tax authorities, and usually with the interest and penalties not accruing.




Finally, usually you’d be allowed to pay these taxes while paying less or nothing to many of your other creditors. These are huge advantages.



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