Chapter 7 cases<\/a>. Chapter 7 is a process that takes about 3 months in which the Trustee legally steps into your shoes and owns the right to receive tax refunds owed to you \u2014\u00a0the Trustee controls the purse strings not you. However, tax refunds, like many other assets, can be shielded from the control of the Trustee using exemption laws. In Oregon, residents can elect to use either the state exemption laws or the federal exemption laws.<\/p>\nThe state exemption laws allow you to shield 100% of any federal earned income tax credit received but only allow you to shield $400 of any other tax refund. If you, like many people, rely upon a tax refund to pay occasional bills or annual costs like property taxes, then the state exemption laws may not give much protection.<\/p>\n
Curiously, there is no federal exemption law that specifically allows you to shield the federal earned income tax credit. But there is a federal \u201cwildcard\u201d exemption that can be used to shield up to $12,725 of ANY property including tax refunds. However, if you own a home or condo which has equity then this large wildcard exemption may be much more limited in scope.<\/p>\n
If you have more questions, give either of us below at 503-786-3800 or send me an email and we can discuss further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This time of year we meet with many people who are exploring bankruptcy options but have questions about how the bankruptcy laws may affect their right to income tax refunds owed to them but not yet received. These laws vary by state and since we practice exclusively in Oregon these comments pertain to the laws […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36486,"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions\/36486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pdxlegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}