The Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report Thursday that found the potential for fraud or error as borrowers self-report information for approval to enroll in income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, and urged the Department of Education (ED) to press Congress for access to data that would allow it to verify borrowers’ income, or use existing data to flag suspicious information.
Monthly payments for IDR plans are based on income and family size. At the request of Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who both sit on the House Committee on Education and Labor, GAO analyzed ED data on borrowers enrolled in IDR plans between Jan. 1, 2016, and Sept. 30, 2017 to determine whether indicators of potential fraud or error existed. GAO used the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH), which reports quarterly wage data for newly hired and existing employees, to match information for the borrowers during that period who reported no income.
While GAO wrote that it found some borrowers “may have misrepresented or erroneously reported their income or family size,” it could not “determine whether fraud occurred through data matching alone.”