How to get business credit

I travel for work extensively and have a large chunks of my income that is non-taxable, basically for "business" expenses like housing, entertainment, food, car, etc. Would I qualify for business credit?

I know Amex asks on apps what part of income is non-txable, which is very helpful, but would I still fall under personal or could I qualify for business credit?

There is always talk about spending more than you earn being problematic, and if some banks require tax returns, with that amount is quite low, spending more than I make is quite easy and I dont want trouble. So, I thought perhaps best bet would be to utilize business credit in addition to personal credit.

What are the requirements? Thoughts?

Good question. While I don't have the answers, I look forward to the replies in this thread as it's a topic I've thought about as well.

I don't spend nearly enough business expense wise, but there have been times where I've had to put a chunk on a personal card. My employer just reimburses me. Typically we're just talking hundreds of dollars; very rare that it's thousands.

I know very little about business credit, but at the two credit unions I've worked at I think you basically needed to have an EIN and provide various business-related docs (e.g. certificate & articles of organization/incorporation, etc) to have a business account or apply for business credit. At one of them pretty much anyone could get a DBA account as a second personal membership, but I don't think it qualified them for business credit products. What you would need to get a business cc from something like Amex idk, but that's the little bit of info I can share.

Business credit generally is reserved for running a business. Like for example, your company could give you a business credit card for all your expenses.

With that said, you can usually get an AMEX on a personal guarantee pretty easily. If you, say, sell things on eBay or whatever, that can be considered a business. AMEX wants at least $1K of business income expected or already received and they don't mind personal use of business cards. The easiest AMEX business card to get is the AMEX Amazon Business card. Its a nice thick metal card too.

You have to watch out with business cards because they don't have the CARD Act applied to them which means that they can change your terms at any time but as long as you PIF, its not a big deal anyway.

I have read about business credit and I am aware of different bureaus that are utilized to track it and different methods to generate ratings without having to spend money.

Basically they try to get you to spend money to get a ranking when you can do it yourself without spending money. Kind of like you don’t need to hire a credit repair organization to clean up your credit, you do it yourself. Likewise you establish your own business credit rather than paying A company to assist you with it.

Apparently you obtain accounts from various businesses such as Best Buy, Office Depot etc. and how quickly you pay your invoice gives you a rating. apparently you need to establish three or four tradelines and let them age for a while. You don’t wanna add too many more than that too quickly or it can have negative consequences.

I’m definitely not well-versed in it and need to study quite a bit more, maybe a member will come along who is well-versed in it?

LaHossBoss wrote: ↑Tue Jul 13, 2021 7:11 pm What are the requirements? Thoughts?

@LaHossBoss Have you looked further into this since posting here? If not I wanted to share my first experience and it might help you. When I first wanted to apply for a biz card I got on chat in the biz section (I didn't have a relationship) and was able to tell the csr what I was interested in and perhaps you could too, that way the csr can better guide you in determining if you qualified for one of their biz products.