[dragonwriter]

> You would be trading $10,000 in credit card debt, with a fair amount of legal protections, for $4,000 in IRS debt with very few legal protections.

Forgiven debt is taxed as normal income, so you'd have to have a 40% marginal federal income tax rate to end up with $4,000 in IRS debt on $10,000 of forgiven consumer debt, which is an approximation of the maximum marginal rate being 39.6% (which kicks in at $400K income for a single taxpayer.)

I would hazard to guess that people that would be paying anywhere close to a 40% marginal federal tax rate aren't really sweating $10K credit card balances.