Understanding Garnishments

This topic discusses:

  • Garnishments in Spain.

  • Delivered garnishment deductions.

When a payee owes money to a third party for court-ordered obligations, such as child support, the employer might be required to deduct part of what is owed before the payee receives payment. The court order establishes the amount of the deduction and how it is deducted from a payee's salary. The deduction, known as a garnishment, is taken every month, according to the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, articles 607 and 608. Article 607 pertains to garnishments to be applied to income received due work. It requires that the size of the deduction depend on a payee's earnings and the number of dependents, and establishes a guaranteed net. Article 608 pertains to alimonies (spouse or child support) that can be deducted directly from the net.

The size of the deduction depends on the payee's earnings and the number of dependents.

Use the Assign Court Order ESP (GPES_GRN_DATA) component to assign garnishment deductions to a payees.

See Assigning Court-Ordered Garnishments.

This table lists the delivered garnishment deductions:

Garnishment Deduction

Description

RETJ JUDCL

This deduction represents an amount, ordered by court, to be paid for any cause except child support (RETJ ALIM) or spousal support (RETJ CNYG).

RETJ CNYG

This deduction represents an amount, ordered by court, to be paid to a former spouse after a divorce settlement. This deduction affects the calculation of the tax withholding percentage and the net calculation.

RETJ ALIM

This deduction represents an amount, ordered by court, to be paid for child support. This deduction affects the calculation of the tax withholding percentage and the net calculation.

RETJ CNYG ND

This deduction represents an amount, ordered by court, that is paid (outside of payroll) to a former spouse after a divorce settlement. This deduction affects only the calculation of the tax withholding percentage.

Use this deduction instead of the RETJ CNYG deduction when you do not want to discount the deduction from the net but still want to enter the deduction so that it affects tax calculations.

RETJ ALIM ND

This deduction represents an amount, ordered by court, that is being paid (outside of payroll) for child support. This deduction affects only the calculation of the tax withholding percentage.

Use this deduction instead of the RETJ ALIM deduction when you do not want to discount the deduction from the net but still want to enter the deduction so that it affects tax calculations.

PeopleSoft Global Payroll for Spain enables you to enter more than one court-ordered garnishment for the same payee with overlapping timeframes. In this case, the system applies the garnishments in a specific order:

  1. The system applies any alimony established by the court.

  2. The system applies any other types of garnishments in the order determined by the Priority Number field on the Assign Court Order page.

  3. If a payee has multiple garnishments with the same priority, the system applies first in, first out logic and deducts the oldest garnishments first.

You can always stop or cancel a court order by entering a value in the End Date field on the Assign Court Order page.

In the case of correction calculation producing a garnishment amount smaller the originally calculated amount, the requirement is to not recalculated the garnishment deductions, as this would produce a negative amount to be transfer, which is not possible. Instead, in that case the requirement is to resolve the garnishments with the previously calculated amounts (which is the behavior in case of normal retroactivity calculation) The system behavior regarding correction calculation, can be customized using the setup variable: CLI VR RECAL REJ.

Possible values of this variable are:

  • A:  'Always'.- System will run recalculation of garnishments always in case of corrections. 

  • N: 'Never'.- System will not run recalculation of garnishments in case of correction calculations, instead previous calculated value will be used.

  • C: 'Conditioned’.- System will recalculate garnishments in case of corrections if the recalculated available net is higher than the originally calculated one. If the recalculated available net is equal or smaller than the originally calculated value then system will not recalculate garnishments, instead previous calculated value will be used. 

Note: The PeopleSoft system delivers a query that you can run to view the names of all delivered elements designed for Spain. Instructions for running the query are provided in PeopleSoft Global Payroll product documentation.