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Testimony of Woodrow Sims Before the Alabama Supreme Court Commission on Child Support and Enforcement.
Real quickly, Here are some questions, do not answer these with a show of hands, I would just like bring some ideas to the forefront.
How many of you can accurately tell me what your auto expense will be for next month (gas, oil change, car wash included)?
How many of you can accurately tell me what you auto expense is for the entire year?
How many of you can tell me how much your food expense will be for your husband/wife for the next year?
It is safe to say that most of us in this room are well informed and might be more prepared for those types of questions than the average American on the street. However, the information used to create the rule 32 formula are answers to these questions from the public. Not accurate data, not even real data, but assumptions, and guesses, estimations, and ideas… This is what is used to create the formula. I have experience changing the business world from using estimations and guesses to real time data in business. Every time, the differences are staggering to my clients. They are amazed at how wrong their estimations were. How understanding the real data enables them to properly address issues of their business.
One more question. How can we get real time data on the cost of child care? Deploy EBT cards to all custodial parents. EBT cards are a cost effective way to streamline the whole process of custodial parents having access to the support through the use of debt cards. The debt card will also give us real data to insure the child gets enough money to have a healthy life. For proof of the success of this type of system, just look at the food stamp department. They boast about how well this system has done, how easily it was implemented and the low cost of the deployment. The amount fraudulent activities decreased significantly since its inception.
The EBT is a viable solution to our problem of having accurate data to create the child support formula. We can guarantee that every child that depends on child support for survival will receive the appropriate amount to aide in the costs of daily upbringing of the child.
Moving on. Point 2
Over the recent past there has been several attempts to increase the % of non-custodial parents that are paying child support. I agree with this initiative whole heartedly. I have disagreed with some of the methods to this, but every non-custodial parent that refuses to pay child support, every non-custodial parent that fled to mexico to avoid paying, puts a stigma in the minds of Americans that all non-custodial parents have to overcome. Parents that want to have an ongoing relationship with his/her children, and that want to create a stable financial environment for them to grow up into healthy adults . Back to the budgets.
1. Lost dogs campaign spent ten times of the amount that it collected in child support. 2. DHR released a report for my county , Lauderdale, saying that it spend 1.34 for every 1.00 spent on child support.
It does not take a bill Gates to realize that these are not productive endeavours. Here is a cost effective idea that will increase the percentage of child support collected. Create an incentive for paying child support. Incentives are generally a better way to get the most unlikely candidates to participate. I am suggesting that we split the child tax credit. I Want emphasize split, not shift the tax credit. We know that the custodial parent has expenses in raising the child and do not want to deny them the right to get a tax benefit. The non-custodial parent is asked share the financial responsibility of raising the child, we should then give the non-custodial parent the right to split the tax benefits for his/her compliance.
I think giving a percentage of the tax credit, up to 50%, based on how much of his/her child support was paid is the answer. For example if someone paid all of the child support due, and can produce the money order/check stubs as proof, he/she would receive 50% of the tax credit. If he/she only paid 50% of the child support due the tax credit received would be 25% percent.
I know this is a big idea, and would not be easiest thing to implement. Considering the cost compared to other child support collection efforts, this one would be miniscule and might still yield the best desired results.
In conclusion, I believe both of these ideas are positive, healthy changes to rule 32 that benefit the children involved. It is well worth any effort or cost to ensure the well being of our future generations because they are america’s best resource. I would once again like to thank the committee for their time in presenting these ideas, and look forward to working them in the implementation process. God bless.