This chapter contains these topics:
To automate the process of calculating and deducting court-ordered payments from employees' earnings and distributing those payments to payees
The Family Support Act of 1988 places the responsibility for collecting and distributing child support and other wage attachments on employers. In the Payroll system, you set up wage attachments so that you can deduct court-ordered payments from an employee's earnings.
Processing wage attachments includes:
Setting up tables for wage attachments
Setting up deductions for wage attachments
Entering employee wage attachments
Reviewing wage attachment history
Wage attachments include:
If your organization has only a few employees with wage attachments, and those wage attachments use only simple calculations such as a flat dollar amount or an amount equal to a percentage of gross wages, you might not need to use the wage attachment processing feature. Instead, you can set up and assign the wage attachment deduction in the same way that you set up and assign any other type of deduction.
The Payroll system contains a comprehensive wage attachment processing feature that you can use to:
Track detailed wage attachment information, such as the wage attachment case number
Define specific calculation rules
Handle multiple wage attachments for an employee
Track detailed wage attachment history, including amounts deducted, deduction dates, and payee information
Your organization can charge employees interest on loans and fees for administering most types of wage attachments. In addition to the fees your organization charges, the agency that collects the wage attachment might also charge an administrative fee.
Garnishment tables contain the federal or state wage ranges and calculation methods for garnishments. Levy exemption tables contain the federal and state standard annual exemption amounts used to determine wages exempt from the levy. You can also set up additional amounts of exempt wages when an employee claims a disability. You should set up these tables before you create the deductions for garnishments and levies.
After you set up tables for wage attachments, but before you can enter wage attachment information for employees, you must set up a deduction for each type of wage attachment. Setting up a deduction for a wage attachment is similar to setting up any other kind of deduction. You then can assign the deduction to an employee using the employee DBA instructions.
The following terms are pertinent to wage attachments:
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Employee | The debtor or obligor |
| Obligee | The creditor, garnishor, or the person or organization to whom the employee owes money |
| Company | Your company, the employer, and the garnishee |
| Payee | The person or organization that receives the payments and, in turn, pays the obligee |
You can review wage attachment information online for an employee, obligee, or payee. You can also review detailed ledger records associated with wage attachments for a specific employee.
To review wage attachment history for multiple employees, you can print the Wage Attachment History report.