15 U.S.C. 1681c: The 7-Year Rule, Line by Line, and Its Exceptions
The statute behind the credit report's 7-year rule, clause by clause: the 180-day trigger, the 10-year bankruptcy period, and the fixed-dollar exceptions.
The short answer. 15 U.S.C. 1681c is the part of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that tells a consumer reporting agency what it may no longer print. Bankruptcy cases drop off after 10 years; paid tax liens, civil judgments, arrest records, and collection or charge-off accounts drop off after 7 years, with civil suits and judgments actually held to 7 years or the state statute of limitations, whichever is longer. Criminal convictions carry no time limit under this section at all. Three fixed-dollar exceptions in subsection (b) — a $150,000 loan, a $150,000 life insurance policy, a $75,000 salary — suspend the whole 7-year and 10-year scheme for those specific transactions. And the clock on a collection or charge-off account does not start on the day it is charged off; subsection (c) starts it 180 days after the delinquency that led to the charge-off began. None of that is guidance or bureau policy. It is the statute, and this page works through it clause by clause, with the exact periods and the exact triggering dates.
Subsection (a): the excluded categories
Subsection (a) opens with a flat prohibition: “Except as authorized under subsection (b), no consumer reporting agency may make any consumer report containing any of the following items of information.” Eight numbered categories follow, and each one carries its own clock.
(a)(1) — bankruptcy, 10 years. “Cases under title 11 or under the Bankruptcy Act that, from the date of entry of the order for relief or the date of adjudication, as the case may be, antedate the report by more than 10 years.” This is the longest period in the section, and it is the only one measured from a court filing rather than from a payment or delinquency date. The order for relief is the bankruptcy court’s formal opening of the case; a report may describe the case for up to 10 years after that date, no longer.
(a)(2) — civil suits, judgments, and arrests, 7 years or the statute of limitations. “Civil suits, civil judgments, and records of arrest that, from date of entry, antedate the report by more than seven years or until the governing statute of limitations has expired, whichever is the longer period.” This is the one category in subsection (a) where seven years is a floor, not a ceiling. If a state’s statute of limitations on the underlying judgment runs longer than seven years, the judgment can lawfully stay on the report until that longer period runs out.
(a)(3) — paid tax liens, 7 years from payment. “Paid tax liens which, from date of payment, antedate the report by more than seven years.” The clock here starts at payment, not at filing of the lien. An unpaid tax lien is not covered by this paragraph’s language at all; it is the paid lien that gets a 7-year sunset measured from the date it was paid.
(a)(4) — collection and charge-off accounts, 7 years. “Accounts placed for collection or charged to profit and loss which antedate the report by more than seven years.” This is the paragraph that governs the overwhelming majority of negative tradelines on an ordinary consumer’s report, and it is the one whose start date subsection (c) goes on to define precisely, covered in its own section below.
(a)(5) — any other adverse item, 7 years, except convictions. “Any other adverse item of information, other than records of convictions of crimes which antedates the report by more than seven years.” This is the catch-all: whatever negative information doesn’t fit neatly into (1) through (4) still gets a 7-year ceiling, with one named exception. Records of criminal convictions are carved out of the exclusion, and nothing elsewhere in this section supplies a time limit for them. Read narrowly, a conviction record has no reporting-period cap under 1681c at all.
(a)(6) — medical information furnisher identity. A consumer report may not include “the name, address, and telephone number of any medical information furnisher that has notified the agency of its status,” unless one of two conditions is met: (A) the name, address, and phone number are “restricted or reported using codes that do not identify, or provide information sufficient to infer, the specific provider or the nature of such services, products, or devices to a person other than the consumer,” or (B) the report goes to an insurance company for a purpose related to the business of insurance other than property and casualty insurance. This paragraph is about identity, not dollar amounts or dates — it never lets a coded, non-identifying entry through as a lump exclusion, it strips the identifying furnisher details specifically. Anyone piecing together what a coded medical entry actually means, or how to challenge one, should read the companion guide on how to dispute a medical bill on a credit report.
(a)(7) and (a)(8) — veterans’ medical debt. Both paragraphs apply only to “a consumer reporting agency described in section 1681a(p),” the nationwide bureaus. Paragraph (7) excludes veterans’ medical debt information if the hospital care, medical services, or extended care services giving rise to the debt were rendered less than one year before the report, provided the agency has “actual knowledge that the information is related to a veteran’s medical debt” and is complying with its obligations under “section 302(c)(5) of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.” Paragraph (8) goes further: it excludes veterans’ medical debt information entirely, at any age, if the debt has been “fully paid or settled” and had been “characterized as delinquent, charged off, or in collection,” again conditioned on the agency’s actual knowledge and compliance with the same 2018 Act provision.
Subsection (b): the three exceptions, and why the dollar figures never move
Subsection (b) suspends paragraphs (1) through (5) of subsection (a) — bankruptcy, civil suits and judgments and arrests, paid tax liens, collection and charge-off accounts, and the adverse-item catch-all — for three specific uses of a consumer report:
“(1) a credit transaction involving, or which may reasonably be expected to involve, a principal amount of $150,000 or more; (2) the underwriting of life insurance involving, or which may reasonably be expected to involve, a face amount of $150,000 or more; or (3) the employment of any individual at an annual salary which equals, or which may reasonably be expected to equal $75,000, or more.”
Read the wording carefully and one thing stands out: nothing in it points to an index, a cost-of-living formula, or any other statute that would move these three numbers over time. They are flat dollar amounts written directly into the text. Whatever they were set at is what they say today, with no built-in mechanism to account for inflation since. A $150,000 mortgage or a $75,000 salary described a much larger transaction when this text was written than it does now, but the statute itself does not adjust for that; only a further act of Congress could.
Subsection (c): when the 7-year clock on a collection or charge-off account actually starts
This is the subsection that answers the question people actually have: not what the reporting period is, but when it begins.
(c)(1), the 180-day rule. The text reads: “The 7-year period referred to in paragraphs (4) and (6) of subsection (a) shall begin, with respect to any delinquent account that is placed for collection (internally or by referral to a third party, whichever is earlier), charged to profit and loss, or subjected to any similar action, upon the expiration of the 180-day period beginning on the date of the commencement of the delinquency which immediately preceded the collection activity, charge to profit and loss, or similar action.”
Worth noting exactly as written: this cross-reference names “paragraphs (4) and (6) of subsection (a).” Paragraph (4) is the collection and charge-off category the 180-day rule is plainly built for. Paragraph (6) is the medical information furnisher identity rule discussed above, which is not framed anywhere in its own text as running a 7-year reporting period the way (4) does. The statute’s wording is what it is; this page states the cross-reference as it appears rather than resolving what that pairing is doing.
Setting that aside, the mechanics of (c)(1) for an ordinary collection account are straightforward once you work through them with real dates. Say a credit card payment is missed and the delinquency that leads to the eventual charge-off commences on March 1, 2020. Computed with Python’s datetime:
from datetime import date, timedelta
delinquency_start = date(2020, 3, 1)
# The 180-day period "beginning on" the delinquency date runs through day 180.
period_end = delinquency_start + timedelta(days=179) # Aug 27, 2020, counting Mar 1 as day 1
clock_start = period_end + timedelta(days=1) # Aug 28, 2020 — expiration of the period
seven_years_later = clock_start.replace(year=clock_start.year + 7)
print(period_end) # 2020-08-27
print(clock_start) # 2020-08-28
print(seven_years_later) # 2027-08-28Counting March 1, 2020 as day one of the 180-day period, day 180 falls on August 27, 2020, and the period expires at the end of that day. The 7-year clock in (a)(4) therefore begins on August 28, 2020, and runs through August 28, 2027 — not from the date the account was charged off, and not from any later date the debt was sold, resubmitted, or paid on. A different counting convention (treating the delinquency date as day zero rather than day one) can shift the exact day of expiration by 24 hours, so the precise date should always be checked against the actual delinquency date on file rather than assumed from a rule of thumb. Finding that original date is its own task, covered in the guide on how to find the date of first delinquency, and it interacts with — but is legally distinct from — a state’s statute of limitations on suing over the same debt, the subject of the guide on the charge-off statute of limitations.
Because the clock is tied to “the delinquency which immediately preceded” the collection or charge-off, a plain reading of that phrase does not give a debt buyer or a later payment a way to reset it. Selling the account, assigning it to a new collector, or a consumer making a partial payment does not create a new delinquency under this text; the delinquency that started the clock is the one that came immediately before the collection activity, full stop. That reading follows directly from the words Congress used in (c)(1) and is not a claim about how any particular furnisher or bureau applies it in practice.
(c)(2), the effective date. Paragraph (1) does not apply retroactively to every account ever reported. It applies “only to items of information added to the file of a consumer on or after the date that is 455 days after September 30, 1996.” Computed the same way:
from datetime import date, timedelta
base = date(1996, 9, 30)
effective_date = base + timedelta(days=455)
print(effective_date) # 1997-12-29455 days after September 30, 1996 lands on December 29, 1997. Items added to a file before that date fall outside the 180-day mechanism in (c)(1); items added on or after it are governed by the rule as written.
Subsections (d) through (g): the disclosure and formatting rules
The remainder of the section, as saved in the text reviewed for this page, covers narrower disclosure and formatting duties rather than reporting-period limits.
(d)(1), title 11 chapter identification. A bureau reporting on a bankruptcy case must include “an identification of the chapter of such title 11 under which such case arises if provided by the source of the information.” If a case filed under title 11 is withdrawn before a final judgment, the bureau must include in the report that the case or filing was withdrawn, once it receives documentation certifying the withdrawal.
(d)(2), key factor in credit score information. Any report that includes a credit score or other risk score must state clearly whether “the number of enquiries” was a key factor that adversely affected the score, if that was in fact the case. This duty does not apply to a check services company acting solely to approve or process negotiable instruments or electronic fund transfers.
(e), closed accounts. If a bureau is notified under section 1681s-2(a)(4) that a consumer voluntarily closed a credit account, it must indicate that fact in any report that includes information about the account.
(f), disputed information. If a bureau is notified under section 1681s-2(a)(3) that a consumer disputes furnished information, it must indicate that fact in each report that includes the disputed information. This flag is distinct from — and typically arrives earlier than — the reinsertion notice a bureau owes after a deletion is reversed, which is its own rule under 15 U.S.C. 1681i(a)(5)(B).
(g), truncation of card numbers on receipts. No business accepting credit or debit cards may print more than the last five digits of the card number or the expiration date on an electronically printed receipt given to the cardholder at the point of sale. This limitation applies only to electronically printed receipts, not to transactions recorded solely by handwriting or by an imprint or copy of the card, and it phased in three years and one year, respectively, after December 4, 2003, depending on when the printing device was already in use.
Why the accuracy of the underlying entry still matters more than its age
Everything above governs how long an accurate item can stay on a report. It says nothing about whether the item was accurate in the first place, which is a separate statutory duty covered by 15 U.S.C. 1681e(b) and its maximum possible accuracy standard. An account can be inside its 7-year window and still be wrong about the balance, the account number, or whether it belongs to you at all. The reporting-period rules in 1681c decide when a correct entry has to come off; they do not decide whether the entry was correct to begin with.
Sources
- Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School — 15 U.S.C. 1681c, Requirements relating to information contained in consumer reports (full text of subsections (a) through (g) quoted above)
Quick answers
Does the 7-year rule ever start over when a debt is sold or re-aged?
Reading 15 U.S.C. 1681c(c)(1) directly, no. The statute ties the 180-day trigger, and everything after it, to "the delinquency which immediately preceded" the collection or charge-off activity. A later sale of the account, a partial payment, or a new account number from a debt buyer is not a new delinquency under the text; it is later activity on the same account. This page reads the clause as written and does not address how a specific furnisher or bureau applies it to your file.
Are the $150,000 and $75,000 exceptions in subsection (b) adjusted for inflation?
Not under the text at 15 U.S.C. 1681c(b). The credit-transaction threshold, the life-insurance face amount, and the salary figure are each written as flat dollar amounts, with no indexing mechanism, cost-of-living adjustment, or reference to any other statute that would update them. Whatever Congress last set is what the text says today; there is no built-in escalator to account for inflation since the amounts were fixed.
Do criminal convictions ever fall off a credit report under this statute?
No time limit appears in 15 U.S.C. 1681c(a)(5) for that category. The paragraph excludes "any other adverse item of information" after seven years but carves out "records of convictions of crimes" from that exclusion by name. Read narrowly, this section simply does not impose a reporting-period cap on conviction records the way it does on collection accounts, judgments, or paid tax liens; nothing else in the text supplies one.
What starts the 7-year clock on a charged-off credit card account?
Under 15 U.S.C. 1681c(c)(1), the 7-year period in subsection (a)(4) begins "upon the expiration of the 180-day period beginning on the date of the commencement of the delinquency which immediately preceded" the charge-off. In practice this means the count runs from roughly six months after your first missed payment on that debt, not from the charge-off date itself and not from any later collection placement or sale of the account.
Can a lender still pull my report if an item is past the 7-year mark?
Subsection (b) suspends paragraphs (1) through (5) of subsection (a) entirely for three transaction types: a credit transaction of $150,000 or more, life insurance underwriting of $150,000 face amount or more, and employment at an annual salary of $75,000 or more. For those three purposes, the bureau may include information that would otherwise be excluded as obsolete, regardless of how old it is.
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