Electronic medical notifications processing and an online hub for communicating with childcare agencies are slated to be available in 2021, relieving employers with many childcare responsibilities, an agency official said on March 16.

Fiscal year 2019 raised approximately $ 34.4 billion for child support, with 75% collected through income withholding, said Sherri Grigsby, manager of the Department of Health’s Department of Health and Child Enforcement Services manager human services.

More than 10 million child support orders have been processed electronically since 2008, when the electronic E-IWO (Income Withholding for Support Order) process was introduced, through 2020, Grigsby said at the American Payroll Association’s online capital summit.

Since the pandemic began, the number of employers implementing E-IWO has increased, Grigsby said, noting that all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands are using it -IWO.

Improvements to the e-IWO portal should be implemented from June, said Grigsby. The OCSE is working with employers and childcare agencies to automate the National Medical Support Notice (e-NMSN), she said. NMSNs are standardized forms that contain information employers need to enroll dependent children on available employer-sponsored health plans. The planned implementation date for e-NMSN is June 18, she said.

In the fall of 2021, the OCSE online portal is expected to support secure two-way communication between childcare agencies, employers and OCSE employees, Grigsby said. Issues related to retention orders, general case questions, lump sums, employment review, medical assistance, layoffs, new hires, tiered reporting, quarterly wages and payment issues could be addressed through the application of the two-way communication portal, she said.

Flat rate payments and terminations can be reported via the OCSE portal for child benefit. However, employers can also use the online portal to update company information and add additional information to be shared with childcare agencies, Grigsby said.

Employers should adopt the electronic money transfer system, which provides a more secure way to transfer personal information, including social security numbers and payment information, said Corrinne Flores, ADP director of government affairs on garnishment.

The e-IWO process is one of the ways employers can notify childcare agencies that an employee with an active income withholding directive has left employment, Grigsby said.

Sending notices out through e-IWO has been a huge benefit as many payroll professionals are working remotely due to the pandemic, Flores said. The ability to send as much information as possible electronically has been a tremendous time saver, she said.

Employers in states that require flat-rate payments to be reported to employees with maintenance assignments can more easily report the required information through the centralized online portal, which is then sent to child maintenance agencies, Grigsby said.

The OCSE’s portal makes it easy for employers to register as multistate reporters and then select the state in which to report the new hiring, Flores said.

“It’s a big advantage because it means you don’t have to transfer this information across states,” said Flores. “You send it to one place and then it is filtered out for you,” she said, noting that this option is available to employers but not to third parties.

One of the most important roles employers have under the child benefit program is reporting new hires and re-hires, Grigsby said, noting that some states require reporting of non-employed, such as B. independent contractors.

Virginia’s passage in April 2020 of a law requiring employers to report independent contractors is not an isolated incident, Flores said, noting that other states are considering similar laws because “their focus and goal is to make sure these independent contractors are localized become “that their child support obligations and the withholding order can be sent to that particular payer.

Working groups, which include employers and childcare agencies, also meet regularly to discuss issues such as streamlining processes for employers to respond to the employment request review in a timely manner, Grigsby said, noting that model laws have been drawn up for blanket reporting, for which there are conditions out there.