We recommend that Treasury develop a system for exclusion of certain payments and extend the effective date of the TIN requirement to no earlier than July 1, 1998. As stated above, the Treasury will begin offsetting debts owed to Federal agencies. This requires close communication between the Federal agencies and Treasury. It was also the belief of many in attendance at the meeting that the agreements for the Treasury Offset Program and Tax Offset Program should be merged into one. There needs to be an electronic notification back to agencies by Treasury that there has been an offset.
Notification needs to be made to creditor and paying agencies.
Written instructions from Treasury are needed concerning merger of agreements for the Treasury Offset Program and Tax Offset. As you are aware, it contains requirements for standards. A couple of issues were raised in regards to implementation of the Bill. Some in the audit community have expressed the feeling that non-compliance with qualification of opinion on the financials, even though the financial statements adequately reflect the financial condition of the agency. We would like for OMB to help provide for consistency in interpretation, by stating their views on how the Bill impacts the financial statement opinion.