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Treasury Offset Program

Frequently Asked Questions for the Public

The questions on this web page are about the Treasury Offset Program, the program that withholds money to pay for a debt. If you have questions about that debt and how to pay it, look at the Debt Management FAQs.

Your payment may be less because you owed an overdue debt to a federal or state agency. If that is the case, you should have received a letter telling you this would happen.

The law says that Treasury may withhold money to satisfy an overdue (delinquent) debt. The official term for withholding money from a payment is "offset" or "administrative offset."

The program that offsets federal payments for overdue debts is the Treasury Offset Program (TOP).

Last modified 09/10/24