Garnishees 107-05050000

Before taking garnishee action, staff must try to negotiate a payment arrangement.

Garnishee action can proceed if the customer does not respond to contact attempts, however the customer must have:

• failed to enter into a reasonable arrangement to pay their debt, or
• had an arrangement they did not keep, or
• failed to disclose their true capacity to repay their debt and failed to enter a reasonable repayment arrangement

Where a customer refuses to enter into an arrangement, garnishee action can proceed without any further contact with customer. If the customer retracts their refusal, negotiations can resume as normal if a garnishee has not already issued.

Debts raised under the below acts are not to be recovered by garnishee:

• Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA) (under $10,000)
• Financial Management Administration (FMA) Act

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

Services Australia cannot garnishee bank accounts held solely for the purposes of self-managing NDIS funds. Participants in the scheme do not need to tell the agency about this bank account.

Child Support

The agency cannot garnishee Child Support payments. A garnishee would be contrary to the Child Support Scheme’s purpose, of transferring payments for the benefit of children.

A payment made under the National Redress Scheme is not considered income for the purposes of the:

• Social Security Act 1991
• Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986
• income tax assessment

Redress payments may be considered as:

• savings
• a financial resource, or
• an asset

The agency can consider a redress payment under the assets test to determine a social security payment.

National Redress Scheme payments are perpetually protected from garnishee by Section 49(2) of the National Redress Act. Services Australia has no statutory right to garnishee these payments.

The customer’s employment details must be known before applying a wage garnishee. Employment details may be found using:

• Employment Income Summary (EANS) screen
• Recovery DOCs if the customer has supplied the details
• Data matches, including:
• Single Touch Payroll, and
• Tax Declaration Forms

Advise the customer of any data matches before taking administrative action or checking the information with a third party. See  Single Touch Payroll debt recovery data match or Tax File Number Declaration Form (TDF) Debtor matching reviews.

For a bank garnishee, the customer’s bank account details must be known. Customers with debts under $2,500 must have an identified capacity to repay before sending requests for information (Q608) notices to financial institutions. APS 5 approval is needed before implementing any bank garnishee.

APS 5/6 Debt Staff will decide and document if garnishee action can start when:

• an arrangement is already in place, and
• the arrangement is not reasonable or not working

If a customer offers a new arrangement, the garnishee should not be withdrawn unless there are exceptional circumstances. Usually, the only time a garnishee would be removed for a voluntary arrangement would be payment in full. In this case, the garnishee must not be withdrawn until the payment is received.

Staff should review a customer's record at the time a new arrangement is offered. There have been instances where a customer makes a new arrangement to avoid other recovery action. For example, a customer makes a repayment arrangement to avoid a tax garnishee, then does not make any payments. Staff can refuse to accept a cash instalment arrangement if this is the case.

Staff must not accept a voluntary garnishee arrangement. Discuss repayment options with the customer such as arranging cash repayments.

Debt Staff must never advise/suggest/encourage a customer to take out a reverse mortgage to repay a Centrelink debt - even if the customer volunteers a reverse mortgage during recovery negotiations.