When Do Things Fall Off Your Credit Report: 7-Year Rule and Exceptions

Things fall off your credit report on a schedule set by federal law: most negative items disappear after seven years, hard inquiries after two, and bankruptcy after seven or ten years depending on the chapter you filed. The clock is tied to the original delinquency date, not the date a debt was sold, paid, or moved to collections.

Timeline by Type of Item

Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c, credit reporting agencies cannot include most negative account information older than seven years in a consumer report.¹ Different entries have their own quirks inside that framework.

Late payments: Whether 30, 60, 90, or 120 days past due, each late notation stays for seven years from the date it occurred.
Collection accounts: Seven years from the original delinquency on the underlying account, not from when the collector took over.
Charge-offs: Seven years, using the same original delinquency date.
Paid tax liens: Seven years from the date of payment. Since 2018, the three major bureaus have voluntarily stopped including most tax liens at all.
Civil judgments: Seven years, or until the statute of limitations expires, whichever is longer. The bureaus similarly stopped reporting most civil judgments in 2018.²
Chapter 7 bankruptcy: Ten years from the filing date.¹
Chapter 13 bankruptcy: Seven years from the filing date.³
Dismissed bankruptcy cases: Can appear for up to ten years from the filing date. Some bureaus remove them at seven years as internal policy, but they aren’t required to.
Hard inquiries: Up to two years. Their scoring effect is usually under five points and fades within a few months.
Soft inquiries: Visible only to you and never affect your score.

Paying off a collection changes the entry to “paid” but does not shorten the seven-year window. Newer FICO and VantageScore models weight paid collections less heavily than unpaid ones, so settling still helps even though the record stays visible.

The accounts discharged through a bankruptcy follow their own seven-year clocks from their individual delinquency dates. Because most of those delinquencies started well before the filing, the underlying accounts often disappear years before the bankruptcy record itself does.

When the Seven-Year Clock Actually Starts

The countdown does not begin when a debt goes to collections or when a creditor charges the account off. It starts 180 days after the date you first became delinquent on the original account and never caught up. That date is called the date of first delinquency.⁴

Say you missed a payment in January 2020 and never brought the account current. The reporting period began around July 2020, and the entry should be gone by mid-2027.

Once fixed, that date does not move. Selling the debt does not move it. A partial payment does not move it. If a collector reports a fresher delinquency date than the real one, that’s re-aging, and it’s prohibited. The Fair Credit Reporting Act bars furnishers from reporting information they know to be false, which covers manipulating the delinquency date.⁴

Signs a debt may have been re-aged: a delinquency date that looks more recent than when you actually fell behind, an item reappearing after it had dropped off, or duplicate entries under different collector names carrying different dates.

Rate Shopping and Inquiries

Multiple inquiries for a mortgage, auto loan, or student loan count as one inquiry when they fall within a 45-day window under current FICO models. Older FICO versions and VantageScore use a 14-day window. Keeping your applications inside 14 days covers you across every scoring model.

Medical Debt Still Follows the Seven-Year Rule

In January 2025, the CFPB finalized a rule that would have banned medical debt from credit reports. A federal court in Texas vacated that rule in July 2025 at the joint request of the CFPB and the plaintiffs, finding it exceeded the agency’s authority under the FCRA.⁵ The standard seven-year period applies to medical collections. The three major bureaus have voluntarily stopped reporting some paid medical debts and small-balance medical collections, but those are policies, not legal protections, and can change.

Exceptions for High-Value Transactions

The seven- and ten-year limits don’t apply in every situation. Federal law lets negative information surface regardless of age in three cases:⁶

Credit transactions with a principal that may reach $150,000 or more.
Life insurance policies with a face value of $150,000 or more.
Employment paying an annual salary of $75,000 or more.

Those thresholds are fixed in the statute and are not adjusted for inflation, so they capture more transactions today than when they were set in 1996. A conventional mortgage almost always exceeds $150,000 and falls under the exception.

How to Find the Removal Date on Your Report

Each negative entry usually shows a field labeled “estimated date of removal,” “on file until,” or similar wording near the account details, often in the comments section or detailed account history.

If no removal date is listed, find the date of first delinquency for the account and add seven years, plus 180 days if the account went to collections. When a debt has been sold, the original creditor’s entry generally carries the most accurate delinquency date. Check the original account, not just the collection entry.

You can pull your reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion for free through AnnualCreditReport.com. Federal law guarantees at least one free report per bureau every twelve months, and the bureaus currently offer free weekly access through the same site.⁷ Compare all three, because each bureau may carry slightly different data or removal dates for the same account.

If Something Doesn’t Fall Off on Time

File a dispute with the credit bureau. Under the FCRA, the bureau has 30 days to investigate, or up to 45 days if you filed after receiving your free annual report or added information during the investigation.⁸ If the bureau cannot verify the information, it must promptly delete it.⁹

The bureau must notify you of the results within five business days of finishing the investigation. You can also request a description of how the item was verified, and the bureau has 15 days to send that after you ask. If the outcome doesn’t fix the problem, you can file a complaint with the CFPB, though your dispute with the bureau must no longer be pending or must have been filed at least 45 days earlier.¹⁰

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
2
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Long Does Information Stay on My Credit Report?
3
United States Bankruptcy Court. Credit Report, How Do I Get A Bankruptcy Removed From My Report?
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports – Section: Running of Reporting Period
5
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB Finalizes Rule to Remove Medical Bills from Credit Reports
6
GovInfo. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
7
AnnualCreditReport.com. AnnualCreditReport.com Home Page
8
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Long Does It Take to Repair an Error on a Credit Report?
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681i – Procedure in Case of Disputed Accuracy
10
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Credit and Consumer Reporting Complaint Notice