# Federal Student Aid’s Suspension of Involuntary Collection in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic
> **Inspection / Evaluation** by Department of Education OIG · 2021-06-15
> *About: Department of Education*
## Report
- **Title:** Federal Student Aid’s Suspension of Involuntary Collection in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic
- **Submitting OIG:** Department of Education OIG
- **Component agency:** Department of Education
- **Type:** Inspection / Evaluation
- **Publication date:** 2021-06-15

## Summary

The objective of our review was to evaluate the results of Federal Student Aid’s (FSA) process for suspending involuntary collection and refunding payments involuntarily collected on defaulted Department-held loans in response to the Coronavirus pandemic.We found that FSA suspended administrative wage garnishments and the U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury) offsets for over 96 percent of the borrowers that FSA collected payments for within 90 days of March 13, 2020, the start of the suspension period.


## Recommendations

- **Rec 1** (Closed): We recommend that FSA’s Chief Operating Officer determine if wage withholding has ceased for the 1,930 borrowers whose employers continued to withhold wages as of October 23, 2020, despite FSA's cancellation of the administrative wage garnishment…
- **Rec 2** (Closed): We recommend that FSA’s Chief Operating Officer adopt the best practice of regularly querying its database to proactively identify payments reposted to borrowers’ loans due to refunds returned to Treasury, broken compromise agreements, and payments…
- **Rec 3** (Closed): We recommend that FSA’s Chief Operating Officer develop and implement procedures to obtain information about and track Justice’s progress on suspending and refunding payments involuntarily collected during the suspension period on Department-held…
## Source
- [oversight.gov report page](https://www.oversight.gov/reports/federal-student-aids-suspension-involuntary-collection-response-coronavirus-pandemic)
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