Business Debt Restructuring in Georgia
7 Laws That Change Your Leverage (2026)

Georgia Commercial Financing Disclosures

The Georgia restructuring starts with a document most owners never knew they were owed.

Before the first debit, before the first shortfall, the disclosure duty had already attached. Georgia Senate Bill 90 as passed provides that before consummating a commercial financing transaction, a provider shall disclose its terms, with only one disclosure owed for each transaction and none owed when a consummated transaction is later modified or forborne. Counsel can review and construe that document against the funded amount before any call. What a provider discloses, or omits, at that moment follows the account for years.

Secondary summaries give counsel the starting markers: transactions consummated on or after January 1, 2024, amounts at or below $500,000, providers closing more than five Georgia transactions a year. The exclusion list runs extremely long, and the enrolled text separately deems a provider’s characterization of an accounts receivable purchase conclusive for one title of state law. Whether a given purchase of future revenue sits inside the definition is the threshold question, answered from the codified section rather than from summaries.

Rarely does a funding statement survive a careful reading unchanged; the unrelated brokerage and telephone provisions belong to other disputes entirely.

An Enforcement Order From Another Court

In January 2022, the Federal Trade Commission announced that two defendants behind an alleged small business financing scheme would leave the industry under court order.

The Commission’s account of the RAM Capital settlement states that the company and its owner were permanently banned from the merchant cash advance and debt collection industries and ordered to pay $675,000, with former customer judgments vacated and liens released. The underlying charges described guarantees and upfront fees exacted after representations to the contrary, funding shortfalls, debits sized in order to exceed what customers were told, unauthorized withdrawals, and confessions of judgment allegedly weaponized against personal assets.

Most MCA marketing knows exactly what it is selling. It prefers not to examine the contract too closely.

An order against named defendants voids no other contract. The value for a Georgia owner lies elsewhere: the order shows which practices draw federal attention, and a file showing those practices negotiates differently.

Enforcement does not cancel your balance. It prices your evidence.

Tax Debts and the Offer in Compromise

Payroll and income tax balances so often sit beside the MCA debt that no restructuring is complete while they are ignored.

The Internal Revenue Service guidance on offers in compromise allows qualifying taxpayers to settle for less through installment agreements or accepted offers, never as an automatic discount. Filed returns and current deposits are conditions, an open bankruptcy bars consideration until discharge and closure, and acceptance begins a five year compliance period in which new balances cannot be added and default restores the original liability less credits.

Installment agreements keep the business current. An accepted offer then demands five years of perfect compliance, an extremely stern requirement for an owner already behind.

There was nothing in the payment plan that addressed the underlying shortfall. There rarely is.

How Business Credit Remembers

The report keeps the debt the way a library keeps an overdue notice: filed, dated, and indifferent to explanation.

Experian’s description of business reports states that UCC filings, judgments, collections, and related business information appear in the file, while a UCC filing and repayment reporting remain distinct events that owners must examine on personal and business reports separately. You sign the refinance and then you discover what the refinance cost. Federal law gives the reader of a consumer report dispute rights worth using: the bureau must note the dispute, investigate, forward supporting documents to the furnisher, and report results back.

No universal score change follows any filing, and counsel protects and preserves the dispute record.

Prior Filings Change the Next Case

Six months after a dismissed case, the prior petition still governs what the new court will allow.

An individual barred by dismissal for willful failure to appear or to obey court orders may not file again for 180 days, and cases dismissed shortly before a new filing can limit the automatic stay without a court order restoring it. Credit counseling within the prior 180 days is a separate condition, and eligibility for filing is not eligibility for discharge.

The court will ask about the prior case. A private settlement cannot revive a discharged obligation by assumption, so counsel reviews the old docket and orders before anyone admits an old balance or signs anything resembling a reaffirmation.

Bring the old case number to the first meeting. It matters more than the new plan.

Refinancing Through the SBA Guarantee

A federal guarantee can replace MCA debt with amortizing debt where eligibility and underwriting allow.

The Small Business Administration guarantees portions of loans made by participating lenders, and permitted uses include working capital and the refinancing of current business debt subject to program rules (which promoters of consolidation products describe as routine, though eligibility, debt purpose, and current lender requirements decide each application on its facts). The guarantee protects the lender on its terms. It erases nothing the borrower owes.

The guarantee form is usually one page.

Canceled Debt and the Georgia File

A forgiven MCA balance so often arrives with a tax bill that the settlement amount and the tax result must be negotiated as one figure.

Canceled debt is generally taxable in the year of cancellation, and a Form 1099-C starts the inquiry rather than ending it, since the recipient must verify the figures and report the correct amount regardless of errors on the form. The exclusions for bankruptcy and insolvency remove qualifying amounts from income, though the statute is not entirely clear on every boundary, which is part of the problem, and excluded amounts generally reduce tax attributes through Form 982.

That is the year the tax return matters more than the settlement, though the dockets I have seen cluster in a few districts and the sample is not scientific.

The review gathers the disclosure, the bank record showing every debit, and a settlement posture that accounts for the exclusion analysis, prior filings, and the forum where any suit would proceed.

Delancey Street is a debt settlement company, not a law firm, and it reviews stacked MCA and business debt for owners seeking negotiated reductions; consultation is where the assembly of this file begins, and independent counsel handles the legal work. Resist the urge to sign a new advance to pay the old one before that review; simply bring the agreements, the ledger, and the tax notices, even briefly, and the objective is to ensure no statement is made without counsel present while counsel ensures the forum and limitations questions are answered first. Federal programs and state disclosure duties set the table for the owner who inventories them before negotiating.