(a) The regulations in this part are issued under the Debt Collection Act of 1982, as amended by the Debt Collection Improvement Act of (DCIA) 1996 (31 U.S.C. 3701, et seq.) and the Federal Claims Collection Standards (31 CFR parts 901-904) issued pursuant to the DCIA by the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). These authorities prescribe government-wide standards for administrative collection, compromise, suspension, or termination of agency collection action, disclosure of debt information to credit reporting agencies, referral of claims to private collection contractors for resolution, and referral to the DOJ for litigation to collect debts owed the Government. The regulations under this part also are issued under the Commissioner's general rule-making authority in the Social Security Act at section 702(a)(5), 42 U.S.C. 902(a)(5), the Treasury's regulations implementing the DCIA (31 CFR part 285), and related statutes and regulations governing the offset of Federal salaries (5 U.S.C. 5512,5514; 5 CFR part 550, subpart K) and the administrative offset of tax refunds (31 U.S.C. 3720A).

(b) This subpart describes the procedures relating to the collection, compromise, and suspension of administrative debts owed to us, the Social Security Administration (SSA).

(c) Administrative debts include claims against current employees, separated employees, and non-employee debtors.

(1) Employee debts include salary overpayments; advanced sick and annual leave, advanced religious compensatory time, overpayments of health benefit premiums, leave buy back, emergency employee payments, travel, and transit subsidies.

(2) Non-employee debts include vendor overpayments, reimbursable agreements, Supplemental Security Income Medicaid determinations, and economic recovery payments.

(d) This subpart does not apply to programmatic overpayments described in subparts D and E of this part, and §§ 404.527 and § 416.590 of this title.

(e) This subpart does not apply to civil monetary penalties arising from sections 1129 and 1140 of the Social Security Act and collected pursuant to part 498 of this title.