Federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance; Disclosure of Information to Consumer Reporting Agencies and Overpayment Recovery Through Administrative Offset Against Federal Payments

In this final rule, we are making several revisions to our regulations dealing with debt collection. First, we are modifying the regulations dealing with the recovery of benefit overpayments under title II of the Social Security Act (the Act) to reflect statutory authority for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to selectively refer information to consumer reporting agencies and to recover title II overpayments through administrative offset by the Department of the Treasury against other Federal payments to which the overpaid individual may be entitled. These collection practices are limited to overpayments made to a person after he or she attained age 18 that are determined to be otherwise unrecoverable under section 204 of the Act after the individual ceases to be a beneficiary under title II of the Act. Second, as an independent agency in the executive branch of the U.S. Government, we are establishing a new subpart D in part 422 of title 20 of the Code of Federal Regulations which explains our rules on debt collection procedures for both administrative debts and for title II program overpayments determined to be otherwise unrecoverable under section 204 of the Act. These rules for the new subpart D address the reporting of delinquent debts to consumer and other credit reporting agencies and the use of administrative offset through the Department of the Treasury. Third, we are revising our rules on the recovery of title II program overpayments through the use of the Federal income tax refund offset (TRO) provisions to reflect that, beginning January 1, 1998, the Department of the Treasury, rather than the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), will administer the TRO program, and to reflect other changes in policies and procedures applied by the IRS and the Department of the Treasury in the TRO program.