I
106TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. R. 4071
To expand the Federal tax refund intercept program to cover children who
are not minors.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MARCH 23, 2000
Mr. CASTLE introduced the following bill; which was referred to the
Committee on Ways and Means
A BILL
To expand the Federal tax refund intercept program to cover
children who are not minors.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Child Support Fairness
and Tax Refund Interception Act of 2000’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds the following:
(1) Enforcing child support orders remains a
serious problem in the United States. There are ap-
proximately 12,000,000 active cases in which a child
support order requires a noncustodial parent to con-
tribute to the support of his or her child. Of the
$13,700,000,000 owed in 1998 pursuant to such or-
ders, $6,900,000,000, or 51 percent, has been col-
lected. Similar shortfalls in past years has brought
the combined total to $35,300,000,000 in child sup-
port owed.
(2) It is an injustice for the Federal Govern-
ment to issue tax refunds to a deadbeat spouse while
a custodial parent has to work 2 or 3 jobs to ac-
count for the shortfall in providing for their chil-
dren.
(3) The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) pro-
gram to intercept the tax refunds of parents who
owe child support arrears has been successful in col-
lecting 1⁄3 of such arrears.
(4) The Congress has periodically expanded eli-
gibility for the IRS tax refund intercept program.
Initially, the program was limited to intercepting
Federal tax refunds owed to parents on public as-
sistance. In 1982, the Congress expanded the pro-
gram to cover parents not on public assistance. Fi-
nally, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of
1990 made the program permanent and expanded
the program to cover parents of adult children who
are disabled.
(5) The injustice to the custodial parent is the
same regardless of whether the child is disabled,
non-disabled, a minor, or an adult, so long as the
child support obligation is provided for by a court or
administrative order. It is common for parents to
help their adult children finance a college education,
a wedding, or a first home. Some parents cannot af-
ford to do that because they are recovering from
debt they incurred to cover expenses that would have
been covered if they had been paid the child support
owed to them in a timely manner.
(6) This Act would address this injustice by ex-
panding the program to cover parents of all adult
children, regardless of whether the child is disabled.
(7) This Act does not create a cause of action
for a custodial parent to seek additional child sup-
port. This Act merely helps the custodial parent re-
cover debt they are owed for a level of child support
that was set by a court after both sides had the op-
portunity to present their arguments about the prop-
er amount of child support.
SEC. 3. USE OF TAX REFUND INTERCEPT PROGRAM TO
COLLECT PAST-DUE CHILD SUPPORT ON BE-
HALF OF CHILDREN WHO ARE NOT MINORS.
Section 464 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C.
664) is amended—
(1) in subsection (a)(2)(A), by striking ‘‘(as
that term is defined for purposes of this paragraph
under subsection (c))’’; and
(2) in subsection (c)—
(A) in paragraph (1)—
(i) by striking ‘‘(1) Except as pro-
vided in paragraph (2), as used in’’ and in-
serting ‘‘In’’; and
(ii) by inserting ‘‘(whether or not a
minor)’’ after ‘‘a child’’ each place it ap-
pears; and
(B) by striking paragraphs (2) and (3).
Æ