Wage garnishments occur when you owe a creditor a debt and they take you to court and the court rules in their favor. The creditor does not actually add the wage garnishment to your credit report–the court does via a public record entry. Wage garnishments are a serious matter and should be taken care of as soon as possible. They also can have a very big impact on your credit score.

A tax lien appears on your credit report when you owe taxes to a government entity.

A repossession occurs when a creditor takes back an item, usually tangible, that you still owe money on and have not been making payments on. More often than not, this happens with vehicles. As you may have guessed: this lowers your credit score.

A late payment is exactly what it sounds like. You paid your bill late and the creditor that added to your credit report. Creditors will typically give you some sort of grace period before adding a late payment indicator to your credit report. If you pay your bills late by a few days, it probably will not appear on your credit report. If you are a few weeks late on your payment, it will likely be reported. A late payment will lower your credit score.

A judgment on your credit report is an indication that a court had determined that you are legally liable for a debt. This will typically occur if you owe another party money, they take you to court, and you lose the case.

Judgments usually only occur if the creditor feels you owe enough to make it worth their time taking you to court. For small debts, the creditor will typically charge them off (write off as a loss) and sell it to a collection company.

Types of judgments can include: back child support, money still owed on a repossessed car, medical bills.

An inquiry is something that appears on your credit report each time it is viewed by a person or a company. There are two types of inquiries: hard inquiries and soft inquiries.

Hard inquiries occur when somebody views your credit report for the purpose of deciding whether they should approve your application for a loan. These types of inquiries will often lower your credit score for a temporary amount of time.

Soft inquiries occur when somebody views your credit report for reasons other than extending your credit, such as a potential employer doing a background check on you.

Whether an inquiry will be a hard inquiry or a soft inquiry will not always be apparent. If in doubt, you should ask the party that is going to view your credit report what type of inquiry will be made.

Identity theft is the crime of using another person’s information to impersonate them. There are many things that identity thieves will do with this information. A few are:

– Opening new credit cards as the other person.
– Obtaining a job as the other person.
– Committing crimes as the other person.

The list goes on. The issue this creates for the victim is that they have to put in many hours of work to “clean up” their identity once they discovered it has been compromised.

A closed account is one that is no longer active or in use. Accounts may be closed for many reasons, some of which are:

– It was closed by the creditor, due to inactivity.
– You requested that it be closed.
– It was transferred to a new account. This can happen if you refinance the loan. In doing so, the old account is closed and the balance transferred to the new account.
– You paid it off. This would apply to loans, such as a car loan.
– Your creditor closed it because you had not been making payments on it. In these cases, unless you contact the creditor to make payment arrangements, it may go to collections.