Charge-Off (Corporate Finance)

You get behind on your credit card payments and eventually stop paying entirely. You decide to chuck it all and move to a monastery in Brazil. What happens at the credit card company?

It's called a charge-off. It means the credit card company has determined that they're never going to get the money from you, and they will have to mark it on their books as a loss.

It doesn't just come up in the world of credit cards. Corporate finance is filled with charge-offs. Any time a debt goes past delinquent and people start looking for the number of debt-collection services, a charge-off comes into play.