Method to increase collection of debts owed to government

• US 7,818,231 B2
• Filed: 12/27/2007
• Issued: 10/19/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/27/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Financial Management Systems, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Financial Management Systems, Inc.
• Inventors: Rajan, Balaji S
• Primary Examiner(s): Trammell; James P
• Assistant Examiner(s): Basit; Abdul
• Application Number:
  US11/964,954
• Publication Number:
  US 20080215392A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,027 Days
• Field of Search: 705/35
• US Class Current: 705/35
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0635 Risk analysis of enterprise or organisation activities
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes

Abstract

A method of increasing the collection of debts owed a government agency by collecting additional names associated with a debtor, verifying that an additional name represents the same person as the debtor, and providing those additional names to the government agency that is owed by the debtor. After the additional names are added, future payments to the debtor can be offset by the amount owed.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method to enable a government referring agency to increase collections of debts owed to the government referring agency by a debtor, the method comprising the steps of:

a. obtaining an input file from the government referring agency in any electronic or paper file format, the input file comprising one or more debtor records, each debtor record comprising a first name, last name, address, and taxpayer identification number of the debtor, each debtor record having been created by the government referring agency when a payment due to a debtor from a payer agency such as the U.S. Treasury is not matched to a debtor record because the debtor'"'"'s last name on the government referring agency debtor record and from the payer agency do not match;

b. loading the input file into a database and assigning a unique identification number to each debtor record to ensure that multiple alias last names associated with the same debtor record are all maintained under one identifier, where an alias last name is a different last name or a last name variation used by the government referring agency'"'"'s debtor;

c. sending the debtor records to multiple sources of public and proprietary data through secure transmission protocols and obtaining from the multiple sources specific data elements for each debtor record, wherein the specific data elements include a match to the debtor taxpayer identification number and the associated last and first names and addresses, and where public records are those records available publicly and freely and whereas proprietary records are those which are controlled by privacy rules and require specific allowable purpose to access such records on individuals usually only available to creditors and government referring agencies;

d. downloading the specific data elements returned by the public and proprietary data sources to the database using the secure transmission protocols and appending the specific data elements to the assigned unique number of each debtor record;

e. comparing the information contained in the debtor records with the specific data elements in the public and proprietary data to create a list of matched debtor last name records, and creating a confidence score for each matched debtor last name record based on a user'"'"'s predetermined criteria;

f. generating from the confidence score for each matched debtor record a list of potential alias last names that have been used by a debtor; and

g. creating an output file, converting the unique identification number for the debtor record back to the referring agency taxpayer identification number, the output file comprising the potential aliases for certain debtors, and transmitting the output file to the referring agency through secure transmission protocols to enable the referring agency to offset debts owed by a debtor against any payments owed to the debtor.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising, prior to step (c), the step of reformatting the debtor records so that each debtor record has a specific format, wherein the specific format includes the identification number of each debtor record.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein, during step (c), the debtor records are sent to the public and proprietary data sources only for the permissible purposes allowed under applicable laws and regulations.

4. The method of claim 1 comprising the further step of making the input file more accurate by eliminating debtor records that should no longer be included in an offset process by the referring agency because of legal or other exclusions.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the legal or other exclusions include debtor bankruptcy and death.

6. The method of claim 1 comprising the additional step of identifying a risk of legal and other public relations exposure to the government referring agency by identifying and classifying input file errors where the government referring agency should take additional steps to ensure that the original debtor record itself is valid where the step includes removing a debtor from the government referring agency input file because an obvious error exists where the debtor taxpayer identification number belongs to an unrelated party and such unrelated party will be negatively affected along with an impact to the government referring agency and where the step includes comparing the first name of the debtor to the first name on the payment record.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the step of identifying a risk of legal and other public relations exposure further comprises identifying debtor records with mismatched taxpayer identification numbers or debtor names.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein step (e), creating a confidence score, comprises matching multiple levels of data, the data including taxpayer identification number, name, name history, address and address history.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein step (f) includes using pre-defined business rules that are applied by and generated through a computer program.

10. The method of claim 1, comprising the further step, prior to step (g), of comparing each additional name to the debtor last name on the input file debtor record, and removing duplicate and same last name records.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein step (e) further comprises creating a separate confidence score for each one of a set of values that match or do not match in a progressive sequence between each debtor record and the public and proprietary data sources, the values comprising social security number, first names where they match, last name, address, address history and date of birth.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein different and previously unavailable debtor alias last names are appended to debtor records using the confidence score generated in step (e).

13. The method of claim 1 wherein each debtor last name from the input file is compared to the additional last names, and duplicates are removed.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the referring agency can select or de-select confidence scores based on the referring agency'"'"'s internal requirements.

15. The method of claim 1 wherein the debtors comprise individuals, corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietors who are specifically included in the government referring agency'"'"'s debtor files and whose payments are not offset due to a non-match of last name.

16. The method of claim 1 wherein the payments owed by the debtor may include loans, grant overpayments and non-payment of taxes.

17. The method of claim 1 wherein the referring agency is provided with the ability to send the input data via Internet or other direct connection access.

18. The method of claim 1 wherein the referring agency can send, receive, upload and download debtor records through secure electronic means with encryption and other devices in multiple formats, media, and methodologies comprising Internet, File Transfer Protocol, and email.

19. The method of claim 8 wherein the referring agency is provided a method to select or de-select the predefined business rules based on their internal requirements.