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Comment by amorphid | Hacker News Reader

USA checking in. I declared chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2010. Chapter 7 bankruptcy eliminates 100% of your dischargable debt. When the bankruptcy process had completed, I still owed ~200,000 USD, which was 140,000 USD in student loans and 60,000 USD in back taxes that were less than 3 years old, neither of which were dischargable.

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In order to owe $60,000 in back taxes, you had to have income. Where did that income go? Were the original loan amounts even higher? Loans of $140,000 sound awfully high for an undergraduate degree. Did you attend a professional school (law school/dental/medical)?

The recession happened, and I attempted to find a job while living on money I had set aside for taxes. That was a flawed plan. About 70% of the loans were from grad school.

At this point, couldn't you just arbitrage it, and take out loans / mortgages / cash advances / credit cards just to pay off student loans and back taxes, after after which you'd actually declare bankruptcy.

If a lender is going to approve a sufficiently large loan to someone with $200k in student loans and tax debt, and without a high income, they would not be in business for long.

I was already tapped out. There was no more money to be borrowed.

That's called fraud and you will go to prison for it.

How is that fraud?

If you borrow money, and it can be demonstrated you never intended to make a good faith effort to pay it back, you're going to have a bad time.

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