[Congressional Bills 108th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1437 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
108th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 1437
To expand the Federal tax refund intercept program to cover children
who are not minors.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
July 22 (legislative day, July 21), 2003
Mr. Chafee 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.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives 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 2003''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) Enforcing child support orders remains a serious
problem in the United States. There are approximately
17,100,000 active cases in which a child support order requires
a noncustodial parent to contribute to the support of his or
her child. Of the $24,700,000,000 owed in 2001 pursuant to such
orders, $14,200,000,000, or 57 percent, has been collected.
(2) It is an injustice for the Federal Government to issue
tax refunds to a deadbeat spouse while a custodial parent has
to work 2 or 3 jobs to compensate for the shortfall in
providing for his or her children.
(3) The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) program to intercept
the tax refunds of parents who owe child support arrears has
been successful in collecting a tenth of such arrears.
(4) Congress has periodically expanded eligibility for the
IRS tax refund intercept program. Initially, the program was
limited to intercepting Federal tax refunds owed to parents on
public assistance. In 1984, Congress expanded the program to
cover parents not on public assistance. Finally, 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
afford to provide such help because they are recovering from
debt incurred to cover expenses that would have been covered if
the parent had been paid the child support owed in a timely
manner.
(6) This Act addresses such injustices by expanding the IRS
tax refund intercept 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 support. This Act
merely helps the custodial parent recover debt owed for a level
of child support that was set by a court after both sides had
the opportunity to present arguments about the proper amount of
child support.
SEC. 3. USE OF TAX REFUND INTERCEPT PROGRAM TO COLLECT PAST-DUE CHILD
SUPPORT ON BEHALF 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 provided in
paragraph (2), as used in'' and inserting
``In''; and
(ii) by inserting ``(whether or not a
minor)'' after ``a child'' each place it
appears; and
(B) by striking paragraphs (2) and (3).
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