- States impute income when a parent’s has unknown income, a parent is unemployed, or a parent is perceived to be underemployed.
- States do it to disincentivize people from hiding income, acquiring work in the underground economy, avoiding employment or seeking part-time work when full-time work is available, and failing to give important information or appear in court.
- They frequently calculate it based on forty hours per week using the minimum (or prevailing) wage of a worker for the entire year. This ignored the fact that employees in some industries, like retail, may be full-time but rarely work 40 hours a week. My husband works at T-Mobile in Sales and averages 34 hours per week. Other people work as contractors so their hours fluctuate over time based on the availability of work.
- Recognizing a problem with courts using imputed income to create child support awards that often exceeded the ability of obligators to pay, the federal government issued Modernization Rule in December 2016. States are now required to include 14 categories of available evidence to review before determining amount of support to impute.
- In Georgia, imputed income is defined in O.C.G.A. § 19-6-15(f)4)(A)