It is estimated that over 30 percent of child support cases involve parents who do not live in the same State as their children. By matching this New-Hire data with child support participant information at the national level, the Office of Child Support Enforcement will be able to assist States in locating parents who are living in other States. It contains strict work requirements for custodial parents receiving public assistance and increases the effectiveness of the Child Support Enforcement program by including the development of New-Hire reporting programs in each State. The majority of the information you will be submitting is already being collected when a new employee completes a W-4 form. To ease the process, States are working closely with their employers, offering them a variety of reporting methods.
Quarterly data is often out of date before the child support office receives the information.
There can be as much as a six month lag between the time when the data is submitted and when it is available to the child support office. With New-Hire reporting, the data will be available within a significantly shorter time period. A direct benefit to employers is the reduction and prevention of fraudulent unemployment and workers' compensation payments. Under federal law, employers are directly required to comply with the reporting requirements, so a state law may not be necessary. A state must simply ensure that its procedures comply with the federal mandate.