II

106TH CONGRESS

2D SESSION S. 2747

To expand the Federal tax refund intercept program to cover children who

are not minors.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

JUNE 16, 2000

Mr. L. CHAFEE (for himself, Mr. KOHL, Mr. GRAHAM, and Mrs. LINCOLN)

introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the

Committee on Finance

A BILL

To expand the Federal tax refund intercept program to cover

children who are not minors.

1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

4 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Child Support Fairness

5 and Tax Refund Interception Act of 2000’’.

6 SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

7 The Congress finds the following:

8 (1) Enforcing child support orders remains a

9 serious problem in the United States. There are ap10 proximately 12,000,000 active cases in which a child
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1 support order requires a noncustodial parent to con2 tribute to the support of his or her child. Of the

3 $13,700,000,000 owed in calendar year 1998 pursu4 ant to such orders, $6,900,000,000, or 51 percent,

5 has been collected. However, this data does not in6 clude reporting from many States, including Cali7 fornia, New York, Florida, and Illinois. Similar

8 shortfalls in past years have brought the combined

9 total of child support owed to $47,400,000,000 by

10 the end of fiscal year 1997.

11 (2) It is an injustice for the Federal Govern12 ment to issue tax refunds to a deadbeat spouse while

13 a custodial parent has to work 2 or 3 jobs to ac14 count for the shortfall in providing for their chil15 dren.

16 (3) The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) pro17 gram to intercept the tax refunds of parents who

18 owe child support arrears has been successful in collecting more than 1 19 ⁄3 of such arrears.

20 (4) The Congress has periodically expanded eli21 gibility for the IRS tax refund intercept program.

22 Initially, the program was limited to intercepting

23 Federal tax refunds owed to parents on public as24 sistance. In 1984, Congress expanded the program

25 to cover refunds owed to parents not on public as-
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1 sistance. Finally, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation

2 Act of 1990 made the program permanent and ex3 panded the program to cover refunds owed to par4 ents of adult children who are disabled.

5 (5) The injustice to the custodial parent is the

6 same regardless of whether the child is disabled,

7 non-disabled, a minor, or an adult, so long as the

8 child support obligation is provided for by a court or

9 administrative order. It is common for parents to

10 help their adult children finance a college education,

11 a wedding, or a first home. Some parents cannot af12 ford to do that because they are recovering from

13 debt they incurred to cover expenses that would have

14 been covered if they had been paid the child support

15 owed to them in a timely manner.

16 (6) This Act would address this injustice by ex17 panding the program to cover parents of all adult

18 children, regardless of whether the child is disabled.

19 (7) This Act does not create a cause of action

20 for a custodial parent to seek additional child sup21 port. This Act merely helps the custodial parent re22 cover debt they are owed for a level of child support

23 that was set by a court after both sides had the op24 portunity to present their arguments about the prop25 er amount of child support.
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1 SEC. 3. USE OF TAX REFUND INTERCEPT PROGRAM TO

2 COLLECT PAST-DUE CHILD SUPPORT ON BE3 HALF OF CHILDREN WHO ARE NOT MINORS.

4 Section 464 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C.

5 664) is amended—

6 (1) in subsection (a)(2)(A), by striking ‘‘(as

7 that term is defined for purposes of this paragraph

8 under subsection (c))’’; and

9 (2) in subsection (c)—

10 (A) in paragraph (1)—

11 (i) by striking ‘‘(1) Except as pro12 vided in paragraph (2), as used in’’ and in13 serting ‘‘In’’; and

14 (ii) by inserting ‘‘(whether or not a

15 minor)’’ after ‘‘a child’’ each place it ap16 pears; and

17 (B) by striking paragraphs (2) and (3).

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