Unemployment Overpayment Not Showing on Treasury Offset Hotline - Will My Refund Still Be Taken?

The Treasury Offset Program (TOP) database is required under 31 CFR § 285.4 to provide notice to debtors before intercepting federal payments. However, there are several scenarios where you might not see an active debt listed: 1. Database synchronization issues between UI agencies and Treasury (common in Q1 2024) 2. Debt may have been transferred to a different collection authority 3. Temporary system outage during their regular Tuesday maintenance window 4. Debt could be marked as 'satisfied' but refund still manually flagged I wouldn't count on receiving that refund until it's actually deposited. The 'last payment' information is particularly unreliable during peak tax season processing.

Have you received an official Debt Satisfaction Notice from your state's UI department? Without that document, you should assume the debt is still collectible regardless of what the TOP hotline says. The IRS and Treasury use different collection modules that don't always communicate effectively during peak processing periods. What state are you in and when exactly was the overpayment established? The timing matters significantly for how it's processed in the current tax year.

I'm getting even more concerned now. Has anyone actually had their refund go through successfully after having an overpayment offset the previous year? I've been checking my transcript daily and it shows the refund amount is still the full amount I'm expecting. Wouldn't it show a reduction if they were planning to take it? I'm so detail-oriented about my taxes and this uncertainty is killing me. I've been tracking this overpayment issue for 14 months now and thought I finally had clarity when it disappeared from the system.

I might, um, have a suggestion that could possibly help in this situation. When I had a similar issue last year, I spent nearly three weeks trying to reach someone at the Treasury Offset Program to clarify my status. After perhaps dozens of attempts, I finally used Claimyr (https://www.claimyr.com) which connected me to an actual human at the agency in about 20 minutes. The agent was able to check multiple systems and confirmed that my debt was satisfied, even though it wasn't showing correctly in their public-facing system. It seems that sometimes there might be information that isn't visible through the automated hotline but that agents can access directly. If you're concerned, it might be worth speaking to someone before your refund processes.

Has anyone compared what happens with SBTG versus direct deposit to your bank? My situation was similar to this last year, but I had my refund going straight to my bank instead of through a preparation service. My brother used SBTG and his offset showed up differently than mine did. Would love to know if the payment pathway makes a difference in how/when offsets are applied!

The Treasury Offset Program is wildly inconsistent this time of year, isn't it? I've been watching these forums for years and noticed a pattern: offsets that don't appear in February often mysteriously reappear in March. But have you considered that your debt might have been sold to a private collection agency? If that happened, it would disappear from TOP but could still be legally collectible through other means. Did you receive any notices about your debt being transferred? Have you checked your credit report recently to see if the debt appears there under a different collector?

I thought I was in the clear last year when my student loan debt vanished from the TOP system. My transcript showed the full refund amount, WMR showed approved, and I even got a DDD. Then, two days before the deposit date, my refund was adjusted and I received only a portion. It appears that the Treasury can intercept funds even after the IRS has approved the refund, at least in some cases. The systems don't always communicate in real-time, which might explain why you're not seeing the debt listed. I would suggest, perhaps, preparing for both possibilities until the money is actually in your account.

Did you request a debt verification letter from your state unemployment office? That's the only way to be 100% certain your overpayment was satisfied. The TOP hotline is just one indicator, but the state UI system is the source of truth for these debts. What does your state's unemployment portal show when you log in?