Dear Jim,
Great to see you at the cdcbaa dinner. Now to your question:
I have had clients with relatively small credit card charges (say, several hundred) incurred to pay taxes and have never faced a 523(a)(14) adversary. (In fact, the only 523 adversaries I ever get are based on some combination of (a)(2), (4), and (6).) Moreover, none of the those clients have told me that the creditor attempted to collect the debt after discharge.
My guess is that the key factor is the passage of time (though a sufficiently large tax charge may get the creditor's attention). For example, if the tax charge was incurred a couple of years prior to filing, the credit card company - whether AmEx, or some other dark side of the force entity - will probably not try to collect because its corporate memory is short. Thus, when enough time has passed the creditor doesn't have a detailed list of the charges in its readily available records, doesn't know that one of the charges was incurred to pay a tax, and just writes the whole amount off after the discharge. On the other hand, if the charge was a couple of months ago, the creditor may pay attention and attempt postdischarge collection. What the time cut-off is is anybody's guess, and undoubtedly varies from creditor to creditor.
My suggestion is to age the debt for a while, unless your client has an 800 pound foreclosure gorilla, or some other monster, banging at the door.
Finally, since 523(c) only includes 523(a)(2), (4), and (6) within its ambit, the debt is presumptively nondischargeable without the adversary. Moreover, if AmEx wants to file a nondischargeability adversary, it doesn't have any time limitation because of Fed. R. Bankr. Proc. 4007(b).
Good luck,
Nick
Nicholas Gebelt, Ph.D., J.D.
Board Certified Bankruptcy Specialist
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