Firstly, to make sure you are caught up, there has been quiet speculation over the last few weeks about there now being a Chase 3/24 rule. If you’ve applied for a Chase business card in the last few months and gotten denied, you’re not imagining a trend. We ran a quick community poll after seeing a wave of denial reports in the group, and the early numbers point to something specific enough that we want to dig deeper, with your help.

Here’s what we’re seeing so far, and where we need more data to actually confirm it.

The headline number: sole props are getting denied at a much higher rate than EIN applicants

Of the 83 responses we collected, 60 people applied as a sole proprietorship and 21 applied with an EIN (the remaining 2 didn’t specify). The denial rates between those two groups are not close.

Sole proprietors: 41 of 60 denied, a 68.3% denial rate.
EIN applicants: 9 of 21 denied, a 42.9% denial rate.

That’s a 25-point gap. On its own, that would be notable. But when we layered in 5/24 count, the pattern got more specific.

The 3/24 and 4/24 zone is where most of you are applying, and where the gap shows up hardest

The majority of responses, 65 of 83, came from people sitting at 3/24 or 4/24 at the time they applied. That’s not surprising since most experienced points and miles folks try to time business card applications right before they’d cross 5/24. Across that 3/24 to 4/24 range as a whole, the denial rate was 64.6%.

But split that same group by entity type, and the gap we saw above shows up again, and arguably gets worse:

Sole prop at 3/24 or 4/24: 34 of 49 denied, a 69.4% denial rate.
EIN at 3/24 or 4/24: 8 of 16 denied, a 50.0% denial rate.

So the theory we’re testing is this: once you hit 3/24 or higher, applying as a sole proprietor may now carry meaningfully more denial risk than applying with an EIN, even when the two of you are at the exact same point in your 5/24 count. If that’s true, it would mean Chase has quietly tightened something on the entity-type side of underwriting that nobody has formally confirmed or documented yet, which is exactly the kind of thing that only shows up when enough people compare notes.

Why we’re not calling this confirmed yet

We want to be straight with you about the limits of this data, because that’s the whole reason we’re asking for more responses instead of just declaring a new rule.

This is a self-selected poll, not a scientific sample. People who get denied are more likely to speak up than people who sail through, so our overall denial numbers are probably higher than the true rate across all applicants. The EIN group specifically is still small, only 16 people at 3/24 or 4/24, split 8 approved and 8 denied. That’s not enough volume to say with confidence that the gap is real and not coincidence. We also realized our original question asking “sole prop or EIN” actually blurs two different things, your tax ID type and your business structure, which can be two separate decisions. We’re fixing that in the updated version.

What we need from you

If you’ve applied for a Chase business card anytime in the last 12 months, whether you were approved or denied, we want your response in the updated poll. We specifically need more EIN applicants at 3/24 or higher right now, since that’s the thinnest part of our data and the piece that would actually confirm or kill this theory.

The more specific and complete the answers, the faster we can tell you something you can actually use before you submit your next application. Link to the updated form is here.