Don’t lie about your income on your credit card applications

So when applying for my second Citi AA card about 8 weeks ago, I got a message saying they needed additional time to process my application. Phone calls usually don’t work until someone gets to my application. A few weeks later, I get something in the mail:

I haven’t been applying for that many credit cards in my lifetime, maybe about 30 or 40, but i have never seen this before. I searched online to see if anyone gotten this and didn’t really find any advice on this.

Well there isn’t very many options but to send in a copy of your tax return. If you don’t, they’ll most likely deny you this time and probably put in a message in your file for good measure. It’s odd that they don’t check W2s but your tax return. I thought it would be really easy to modify my tax return in TurboTax and put a much higher income than what I put on my CC app and then get instantly approved.

Luckily, when I saw my tax return, I actually put my income as a few thousand under my gross income. I knew I was really close anyway. So i sent it in…

About two weeks later, I call in to check on the status of it to make sure they got my forms. They did confirm the delivery and that they are awaiting verification. Verification? From who? Well, they actually send out the form back to the IRS for verification. I would have thought credit card companies had access to that information. I believe that they don’t and the only way they can is to request the form and send it into the IRS to verify as I’m sure i wouldn’t have been the first to send in a fake tax return.

Lesson of the day: Don’t lie about your income. Online, others have posted that it could be used against you in a court of law. Well civil court, probably not criminal. Unless you’re that good or in that much trouble.

I have been checking my mail hoping to see the packet with my new cards or another rejection letter. Its bad enough to see the instant rejection online but its even worst when you have to wait 7 days and get a rejection letter in the mail. I’m sure its not worst than those Dear John letters.

I checked the application status online today and found out:

I was approved!

The $2k limit would be hard to work with but I’ll see about moving some credit around. Still excited about getting another 50k AA miles! Come to think of it, I have no clue if its MC or Visa so I don’t know if its even 50k. It may be 40k. Oh well I’ll just wait and see.