Lesson 10: Warrant Hold Offset Process

Automated Offset Process (AOP)

About the Process

The Comptroller’s office is authorized to offset held warrants against the payee’s state debt per Texas Government Code, Section 403.0551 . The Comptroller’s office is required to:

• Notify the payee when a held warrant is issued and that the warrant will be offset 30 days from the date of the notice. See Notice of State Payment(s) Held in Lesson 8.
• Establish an offset hierarchy if the payee is on hold by multiple hold source agencies.
• Issue a payment for the difference, referred to as an overage payment, when the warrant amount is more than the debt amount.

The process is automated and referred to as the Automated Offset Process (AOP). AOP is scheduled on a weekly basis and includes:

• TINS identifies held warrants that are past 30 days from the issue date and eligible to be offset.
• AOP kicks off on Monday. If Monday is a federal holiday, AOP shifts to Tuesday if it is a business day.
• A deposit voucher is generated to credit the offset amount of the held warrant to the hold source agency.
• TINS reduces the payee’s liability amount by the amount of the offset warrant or releases the payee from hold if the offset warrant satisfies the full liability amount.
• An AOP offset report is generated for the hold source agency.
• When applicable, AOP generates an overage payment that is distributed to the payee by the Comptroller’s office.

Offset Hierarchy

As authorized by the offset statute, the Comptroller’s office established a hierarchy that determines the order of state debts that held warrants will be offset as follows:

• First: Child support delinquency owed to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG).
• Second: Tax delinquencies owned to the Comptroller’s office.
• Third: All other holds based on the date the hold source agency set up the hold, displayed in the HOLD DATE field on the PYHOLD screen (Lesson 3).

Offsets for Child Support Delinquencies

Held warrants that are on hold by the OAG for child support delinquency are excluded from the Comptroller’s offset process and are forwarded to the OAG to perform its own offsets. A different statute, Texas Family Code, Section 231.007 , requires the Comptroller’s office to deliver held warrants to the OAG. Any overage payment that results from the OAG’s offset process is issued and distributed by the OAG. TINS does not maintain a record of the OAG’s overage payments.

Voluntary Offsets

Lesson 6 covers the Notice of State Payments Held, which includes the form Section A – Voluntary Offset (VO) on the back of the notice. A payee who may be due an overage payment may choose to submit the VO before the 30-day offset period to expedite the issuance of the overage payment.

Automated Offset Process (AOP) Agency Deposit Report

The AOP generates a report, HLD6101A AOP Agency Deposit Report, for the hold source agency that provides the details for each of its debtors’ offsets processed on its behalf. It is the agency’s responsibility to monitor the report promptly to update its internal records for each of its debtors whose warrants were offset. Failure to update the internal system may result in erroneous future offsets.

Example: HLD6102A AOP Agency Deposit Report

HLD6102A                           TEXAS COMPTROLLER OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS                 XXX     HLD6102A
DATE MM/DD/YYYY                         AOP AGENCY DEPOSIT REPORT
                                   AGENY: XXX – HOLD SOURCE AGENCY NAME               PAGE:    1
                                         
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOCUMENT NUMBER: DXXXXXXX
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TIN              WARRANT   ISSUE     ISS  HOLD        HLD   WARRANT      CURRENT    DEPOSIT  ADJUSTED   C   
            MC   NUMBER    DATE      AGY  NUMBER      RSN    AMOUNT     LIABILITY    AMOUNT  LIABILITY  I
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1XXXXXXXXX6 XXX  XXXXXXXX1 MM/DD/YYYY XXX 1XXXXXXXXX6 XXX      XXX.XX   XX,XXX.XX   XXX.XX  XX,XXX.XX  N
                                          1XXXXXXXXX6 XXX                 X,XXX.XX     0.00  X,XXX.XX
                                                                                   --------
                                                                                     XXX.XX

7XXXXXXXXX3 XXX  XXXXXXXX1 MM/DD/YYYY XXX 7XXXXXXXXX3 XXX      XXX.XX   XX,XXX.XX   XXX.XX             N
            XXX  XXXXXXXX2 MM/DD/YYYY XXX 7XXXXXXXXX3 XXX      XXX.XX                XX.XX       0.00  N
                                                                                   --------
                                                                                     XXX.XX


TOTAL WARRANTS:       3                                   TOTAL DEPOSIT:      

Field Descriptions

REPORT NUMBER

Displays report number HLD6102A.

AGENCY NUMBER

Displays the three-digit number of the hold source agency.

DATE

Displays the date the report was generated.

REPORT TITLE

Displays the title of the report.

AGENCY NUMBER – AGENCY NAME

Displays the three-digit agency number and name of the hold source agency.

PAGE

Displays the page number.

DOCUMENT NUMBER

Displays the deposit document number.

TIN

Displays the 11-digit TIN that was used to issue the warrant.

MC

Displays the three-digit mail code used to issue the warrant.

WARRANT NUMBER

Displays the nine-digit warrant number.

ISSUE DATE

Displays the warrant issue date.

ISS AGY

Displays the three-digit number of the agency that issued the warrant.

HOLD NUMBER

Displays the 11-digit number for the hold record.

HLD RSN

Displays the three-digit hold reason code.

WARRANT AMOUNT

Displays the amount of the warrant.

CURRENT LIABILITY

Displays the liability amount at the time the warrant was offset.

DEPOSIT AMOUNT

Displays the amount of the warrant that was offset against the hold amount.

ADJUSTED LIABILITY

Displays the adjusted liability amount after the offset.

C I

Displays a Y (Yes) or N (No) confidential indicator for the warrant when applicable.

TOTALS

• TOTAL WARRANTS
  Displays the total number of warrants on the report.
• TOTAL DEPOSIT
  Displays the total amount of offset warrants.

See Offset Process on TexPayment Resource for more information about the AOP process.

Next: Learning Check