District courts testing GarnIT for SCAO

Earlier this year, the Michigan Supreme Court entered an order authorizing the 36th, 46th, and 47th District Courts and the State Court Administrative Office (SCAO) to pilot a project to automate the business process for issuing writs for income tax garnishment. This action continues pilot testing conducted last year in the 36th District Court in Detroit and expands testing to courts in Southfield and Farmington Hills.

The goals of this initiative are to reduce overall costs and time associated with processing requests for garnishment, to improve customer satisfaction, and to implement a standard automated process.  GarnIT (Garnishment of Income Tax) is designed to process single requests or bulk requests and includes certain features, such as data validation with the court’s case management system and payment of filing fees.  A valid signed writ is issued for each validated request and provided to the user via GarnIT.

Testing of the GarnIT application has begun and interested parties who file bulk requests with the court can volunteer test data for use during this phase.  Test data must follow specific formatting instructions, similar to that required by the Michigan Department of Treasury for electronic submission of Income Tax Garnishment Writ requests.  These formatting instructions and other details will be provided, and the GarnIT development team will be available to provide technical support and feedback.