Debt Collection

The Securities and Exchange Commission is trying harder to collect fines it levies on corporate wrongdoers but has recovered less than 50% in recent years by some measures, a congressional report released Thursday found. In an update of a 1998 report, the General Accounting Office found the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission had collected about 94% and 99%, respectively, of the total dollars levied in cases closed from January 1997 through August 2002.

More than 300 parents who lost their driver's licenses for failing to make child-support payments descended on the Orange County Department of Child Support Services offices Saturday to reclaim their ability to drive legally -- if they can pay some of the money they owe. Parents started to line up outside the offices about 6:30 a.m., said Angel Monico, public outreach manager for the department. Thirty-nine workers were on hand to handle the crowd from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Only three years after California overhauled its beleaguered child-support system, the state's budget crisis is expected to inflict layoffs, hiring freezes and spending cuts on agencies in some counties that already have among the state's worst records for collecting child support. Anticipating a $40-million cut in funding to child-support agencies statewide, San Bernardino County, with a collection rate of 36%, has issued layoff notices to 60 child-support workers.

Los Angeles officials scoured 324,000 electronic files in the process of hunting down Don Mann, an admitted business-tax violator. But in his case, at least, their prize looks pretty paltry: If Mann's accountant is correct, all that searching will lead the Van Nuys resident to cough up about $100 in delinquent business license taxes. Mann, a freelance movie consultant, concedes that he didn't pay the tax. He didn't know about it, he says.

Kmart Corp. demanded the repayment of all executive retention loans made before the discount retailer filed for bankruptcy protection and fired the five remaining recipients of the bonuses still with the company. An internal probe found that management under former Chairman Charles Conaway didn't properly disclose information with the board when it set up the loan program in 2001, Kmart said.

A bankruptcy filing by a Los Angeles hospital that relied on financing from National Century Financial Enterprises Inc. leaves future payments on almost $19 million in municipal debt in doubt, a trustee for bondholders said. Granada Hills Community Hospital, which borrowed from National Century this year, filed for bankruptcy protection Nov. 26, and monthly principal and interest payments haven't been met since September, a Dec. 2 notice to investors from U.S. Bank said. The notice said U.S.

Defense contractors Boeing Co. and General Dynamics Corp. said a federal appeals court blocked the Defense Department from collecting $2.3 billion it claims the two companies owe for a scrapped Navy fighter program. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued a stay of its August 2001 decision, saying immediate collection of the money is not in the national interest.

The Pentagon said it would begin collecting $2.3 billion from General Dynamics Corp. and Boeing Co. for what the government considers debt owed on a canceled A-12 stealth aircraft project 11 years ago. Instead of asking the firms to turn over the $2.3 billion, the Pentagon plans to get the money by withholding about $128 million a month for 18 months on other government contracts held by the firms.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to start charging a "user fee" when economically troubled taxpayers ask to pay less tax than they owe through a so-called offer in compromise. In proposed regulations issued Tuesday, the agency said taxpayers requesting an offer in compromise would have to pay a $150 fee.

The number of mothers receiving all the child support they were due increased by more than 25% during the late 1990s, the Census Bureau reported Friday. A strong economy and stricter enforcement prompted more fathers to pay in full, analysts said. More than 2.8 million women collected all the child support they were owed, representing nearly 46% of all custodial mothers due payments in 1999. That was up from nearly 2.2 million, or almost 37% of the mothers owed support in 1993.