The Community Usury Ledger

A public record of where high-cost debt and contracts drain money from households — and what that same value could help build if more of it stayed with the people who earned it.

Document the harm. Protect the person. Ask the deeper question: what could this money build instead?

Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones has spent decades urging people to move beyond merely documenting disparities and ask why they keep appearing. The Ledger applies that discipline to household extraction: record what is happening, examine the structure producing it, and use the record to inform responsible action.

The Ledger is one mechanism inside Seven Years of Change. It is not the whole platform. Its job is to make one kind of economic pressure visible so communities can understand what is being lost, what relief might require, and what locally owned capacity could be built instead.

The Ledger Does Three Things

1. Records the drain. It documents high-cost debt and contracts household by household, lender by lender, and region by region.

2. Protects the person. Private identifying information is separated from anything intended for public display, and nothing is published without the household reviewing and approving the proposed entry.

3. Shows the alternative. It asks what the extracted money could help support if more value remained in the household and community — stability, useful work, productive assets, and eventual community ownership.

The Ledger is not a court, lender, debt-relief guarantee, investment offer, or declaration that a contract is legally invalid.

The 10% Community Line

For debt with a stated annual percentage rate, Seven Years of Change uses 10% as a community-accounting benchmark. The Ledger records the portion above that line as extraction under the 7YOC standard.

That does not mean 10% is the legal interest-rate limit in every state or for every product. Laws vary by product, lender, borrower, and jurisdiction. The Ledger is documenting a community standard, not issuing a legal ruling.

For agreements that do not present a simple APR — including some rent-to-own and other payment contracts — the Ledger can record the cash price, payment schedule, duration, total cost, fees, and other terms shown in the household’s own agreement.

The First Entry Is the Founder’s Own

The Ledger began with the founder documenting his own household exposure to extraction and institutional delay. That choice establishes the ethical order: the platform does not ask other people to make themselves visible while the founder remains hidden.

The fuller first entry remains part of the public record. Future household entries are voluntary. No one is required to appear on the Ledger to ask questions, participate in 7YOC, receive care from an independent provider, or take useful action in a community.

A person can need help today and become a builder, worker, owner, mentor, supplier, governor, or protector tomorrow. The Ledger never freezes someone inside the category of “person in debt.”

A Record Is Only Useful If It Changes What We Can Do

The Ledger does not exist to create a larger shelf of suffering. It exists to make patterns visible enough to act on them responsibly.

Documentation can help a household understand its own financial drain. Across households, it can reveal repeated products, fees, rates, contracts, lenders, geographic patterns, and gaps in existing help.

That evidence can then inform the larger 7YOC work: connecting people to existing assistance, testing lawful alternatives, organizing demand, reducing unnecessary household pressure, building useful local work, and deciding what productive capacity communities should own.

The record does not become the person’s identity. The goal is movement: pressure → breathing room → useful action → work → capacity → assets → ownership → more useful action.

The Poor and Working-Poor Reparations Plan is one proposed repair mechanism connected to this record. Seven Years of Change is not currently promising or distributing household debt relief simply because an entry is documented.

Membership, Community Contributions, and Project Capital Are Different Things

1. Community membership

The platform describes a low-cost community membership share as a way to join a future member-governed structure. It is intended as membership, not as a purchase made for financial return. Final cooperative, state-law, tax, and securities documents must control before money is accepted through a formal membership structure.

2. Community contributions

A community contribution is money given to support community-building activity without a promised financial payout. Do not call a payment tax-deductible unless it is made to a qualified organization and the applicable tax rules and receipt support that treatment.

3. Project-specific capital

A future project may use a separate written loan, investment, or other capital agreement after legal, tax, accounting, ownership, and disclosure review. Any such agreement belongs only to that project. It is not created by reading this website, joining 7YOC, submitting a Ledger entry, or making a community contribution.

Seven Years of Change uses a six-percent maximum financial-return principle for separately documented project capital. That 6% ceiling is different from the Ledger’s 10% community-accounting line. The numbers serve different purposes and are not averaged or exchanged.

Nothing on this page is a public offer to buy or sell a security, enter a lending agreement, or guarantee a financial return.

Nothing flows upward to the founder merely because a community uses the 7YOC framework. The purpose is to move capacity and ownership outward into accountable community hands.

Debt Relief Can Create Tax Consequences

This is where 7YOC must be precise. Different forms of repair can produce different federal and state tax results. Paying a creditor in full, negotiating a principal reduction, having a lender cancel debt, giving money directly to a household, or providing assistance through a charitable organization are not automatically treated the same way.

Under current IRS guidance, canceled or forgiven debt is generally included in gross income unless an exception or exclusion applies. Bankruptcy and insolvency are among the important exclusions, and taxpayers who claim certain exclusions generally use Form 982. An applicable financial entity generally files Form 1099-C when $600 or more of debt is canceled after a qualifying event.

There is no general $100,000 federal “tax-free” threshold for canceled debt. 7YOC should never promise that a household will avoid tax merely because relief stays below $100,000.

The tax result depends on facts and structure. A Form 1099-C can be important, but receiving or not receiving one does not by itself decide whether an amount is taxable. Households should receive independent tax guidance before a relief transaction is completed when cancellation-of-debt or other taxable-income questions may arise.

If charitable or foundation money is used

A participating charity or foundation also has its own rules. Tax-exempt organizations must operate for charitable purposes and avoid impermissible private benefit. Assistance programs need written eligibility, selection, documentation, conflict, privacy, and record keeping procedures appropriate to the organization and the type of aid. Private-foundation rules can be more restrictive than public-charity rules.

Likewise, a community contribution is not automatically tax-deductible merely because it is called a contribution. IRS deductibility generally depends on payment to a qualifying organization and compliance with the applicable substantiation rules. Gifts made directly to individuals are not charitable deductions for the donor.

Before 7YOC or a participating institution accepts money for household debt repair: written tax, legal, accounting, eligibility, privacy, and conflict-of-interest rules should exist first.

This page is public education, not individual tax or legal advice. Federal and state rules can change, and each household’s circumstances are different. Please check with a tax authority to protect yourself and your family.

What Success Looks Like

The Ledger succeeds when documentation becomes useful without becoming exploitative: people understand what is happening, private information is protected, patterns become visible, existing help is easier to find, proposed repair is designed carefully, and communities gain greater capacity to keep value circulating locally.

No Ledger entry gives 7YOC ownership of a person’s story, debt, data, future, or community. Public use requires informed permission, and a person may ask for correction, clarification, or removal of identifying public material.

Continue From Here

Want to understand the proposed repair mechanism? Read The Poor and Working-Poor Reparations Plan.

Want to understand how useful action becomes work and ownership? Read The Work.

Want to understand the institutional bridge and transfer rules? Read Build, Protect, Keep the Work.

Want to begin with what your community already has? Start With the Community Survey.

Want to help build financial governance, verification, tax, accounting, or community-finance capacity? Write to connect@sevenyearsofchange.org with the subject line: Ledger / Community Finance — [your city or field].

Sources and Grounding

• Internal Revenue Service — Topic No. 431: Canceled Debt — Is It Taxable or Not?

• Internal Revenue Service — Publication 4681: Canceled Debts, Foreclosures, Repossessions, and Abandonments

• Internal Revenue Service — About Form 1099-C, Cancellation of Debt

• Internal Revenue Service — Form 982 and Instructions

• Internal Revenue Service — Topic No. 506: Charitable Contributions

• Internal Revenue Service — Charitable Organizations: Disaster Relief / Emergency Hardship resources (for charitable-class and needs-based principles)

• Federal Reserve Board — Consumer Credit (G.19)

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — payday lending and consumer-credit resources

• Federal Trade Commission — rent-to-own consumer information and research

• Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD — CDC/National Academies materials on moving beyond description to the deeper structural question

For People and Planet.

Document what is leaving. Protect the person. Build what can remain.