Federal Child Support Office to Update Online Portal

The electronic processing of medical notices and an online hub to communicate with child-support agencies are to become available in 2021, lightening the load on employers with many child-support responsibilities, an agency official said March 16.

About $34.4 billion was collected for child support in fiscal 2019, with 75% collected through income withholding, said Sherri Grigsby, manager of employer services for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Child Support Enforcement.

More than 10 million child-support orders have been processed electronically from 2008, when the electronic Income Withholding for Support Order (e-IWO) process was implemented, to 2020, Grigsby said at the American Payroll Association’s online Capital Summit.

Since the start of the pandemic, there has been an uptick in the number of employers implementing e-IWO, Grigsby said, noting that all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands are using e-IWO.

Enhancements to the e-IWO portal are to be implemented starting in June, Grigsby said. The OCSE is working with employers and child-support agencies to automate the National Medical Support Notice (e-NMSN), she said. NMSNs are standardized forms that provide information needed for employers to enroll dependent children in available employer-sponsored health plans. The target implementation date for e-NMSN is June 18, she said.

In fall 2021, the OCSE online portal is to start supporting secure two-way communication among child-support agencies, employers, and OCSE staff members, Grigsby said. Topics related to income withholding orders, general case questions, lump sums, verification of employment, medical support, terminations, new hires, multistate reporting, quarterly wages, and payment questions could be addressed through the two-way communication portal application, she said.

Lump-sum payments and terminations can be reported through the OCSE child-support portal, but employers also can use the online portal to update company information and add supplemental information to be shared with child-support agencies, Grigsby said.

Employers should adopt the electronic funds transfer system, which offers a more secure way to transmit personal information, including Social Security numbers and payment information, said Corrinne Flores, ADP director of government affairs for wage garnishments.

The e-IWO process is among the ways that employers can notify child support agencies that an employee with an active income withholding order has ended employment, Grigsby said.

Sending terminations through e-IWO has been a huge benefit since many payroll professionals are working remotely because of the pandemic, Flores said. Being able to send information as much as possible electronically has been a huge time saver, she said.

Employers in states that require reporting of lump-sum payments to employees with child-support orders can use the centralized online portal to more easily report the required information, which is then sent to child-support agencies, Grigsby said.

Easing the burden of multistate reporting, the OCSE’s portal allows employers to register as a multistate reporter and then select the state to which the new hire is to be reported, Flores said.

“That’s a huge benefit because then you’re not having to transmit that information across multiple states,” Flores said. “You are sending it to one place and then it gets filtered out for you,” she said, noting that this option is available to employers but is not available to third-party service providers.

One of the most important responsibilities that employers have in the child-support program is to report newly and rehired employees, Grigsby said, noting that some states require the reporting of nonemployees, such as independent contractors.

Virginia’s enactment in April 2020 of a bill requiring employers to report independent contractors is not an isolated incident, Flores said, noting that other states are looking at similar bills because “their focus and goal is making sure that those independent contractors are being located” so that their child-support obligation and the income withholding order can be sent to that specific payor.

Working groups that include employers and child support agencies also are meeting regularly to address issues such as streamlining processes for employers to timely respond to verification of employment request, Grigsby said, noting that model legislation was drafted for lump-sum reporting that is out there for states.