No you bloody well shouldn’t.
But strangely many people do. There are so many reasons why it is desirable to inflate your income, here are a few:
- Higher Income = higher individual credit line
- Higher Income = higher total credit allocation
- Higher Income = generally more important a person and more likely to be accepted
- The phrase ‘inflating your income’ sounds so much more innocent than lying.
Are any of the above true? I’ve no idea, I do know they sound convincing though.
Here’s a reason that you might not want to inflate your income:
- It’s fraud.
When is it likely to bite you in the butt?
If you do commit fraud on an application you’ll likely not be sent to prison for it as a primary offense. That means that there isn’t a team of prosecutors out there looking for fraudulent applications in order to indict you, however, it can come back to bite you in the backside in a couple of ways. If you fraudulently ‘inflate’ your income and later file for bankruptcy, you might well find that the bank will dig into your declared income and actual income. Don’t be surprised if your claim to eradicate your debt is met with a claim to throw you in the slammer for ‘inflating’. If you’d like to check the law on that you can look up 11 USC sec 523(a)(2) (thanks T)You might also find a moment of panic from financial reviews that card issuers will hit you with for a variety of reasons.
Lying is cool, but it is time to man up
Or ‘Woman up’ if you are ready for that.
Stop using fluffy words like ‘inflate your income’ for what is really best described as ‘outright lie’ or ‘commit fraud’ another term that annoys me is ‘fat finger’ when it comes to your SSN. Earth to fraudster: if you are intentionally mis-typing a SSN in order to get around system rules, you are committing fraud. Calling it something cute doesn’t stop it being fraud, and is not a legal defense. Of course, I am not a lawyer, but I can tell you cutesy doesn’t cut it. Personally, I think that there are times when it is OK to lie. These times include me saying how excited I am to go visit the inlaws, or how I enjoy how many shades of grey there are. The times when it is not OK to lie are when there are Federal consequences. Don’t fool around with this crap for the sake of a few credit card points.
Also, pretending you have a business to get a business CC. Amazing how many bloggers encourage people to commit fraud so they can get more referral bonuses.
I was going to add that the one time its ok to commit fraud would be if you were applying for my links, but I ran out of time before having to start dinner.
Matt, this is a great PSA or reminder, although I have a quick question ancillary to this: on most credit applications should you be putting down personal income or household income with spouse? I’ve been doing this for a couple years now and am never usually sure which way to go even when you click the more information part of the application…
Actually, I am not totally sure about that. I tend to think about it as ability to repay/income so have considered that spousal income could be included if your household has that agreement in place. However, I’d have to confirm that the banks agree with that!
Actually, I had a quick look, and it seems to agree with me. You can list your real income, then additional ‘other ‘ income (or just total income for consideration) so you could include spouse, and other income flows such as rental properties, investments etc.
Good reminder. But it is a bit ironic to warn people about such a common fraud when the biggest frauds on the planet are being committed daily by the very banksters offering these credit cards. Of course, the Average G-man can wrap his head around minuscule “fraud” like inflating your income a few thousand dollars, but their brains explode when they try to understand the gargantuan fraud committed on WS on a daily basis. And why the little guys get prosecuted while the big guys get a slap on the wrist and nobody gets fired, let alone goes to jail.
As for inflating income (lying), if the CC companies really cared what your real income is, they could demand a copy of your income taxes. But they don’t. So it’s obviously not that important to them…
Sure, but the little guy is also more likely to get screwed over than these WS folk… so better to CYA.
So you’re saying you have never inflated your income??
Not on a credit card application. I’ve had no need to.
It was close to a year I hadn’t done AOR for self and ‘homemaker’ DW. I think we faced issue with most banks “wording” this time where ‘homemaker” option was nowhere to be found. DW did get most apps approved stating my income as hers, with the exception of Discover IT. They denied saying could not ascertain information provided in spite of sending in copy of DL and utility bill.
I know plenty of people who inflate their income on their credit card applications to get lower interest/higher credit limit. A buddy of mine even did income verification with discover card, and he inflated his income (about 9k more) on his application and he still got approved without any problems. Just don’t max out CC and file bk