The Louisiana Department of Revenue announced Friday a new tool to enhance its efforts to collect overdue debts owed to agencies across state government.

The new Federal-State Offset Program will allow the state to intercept payments owed by the federal government to vendors and contractors for the payment of non-tax debts owed to the State of Louisiana. The program will collect an estimated $11 million per year.

Under this initiative, a participating state agency will submit to the program delinquent debts it has made extensive efforts to collect through communication with the debtor. The program will match those debts to a federal database of taxpayers, vendors and contractors owed refunds or payments by the federal government. If there is a match, the program will claim those refunds or payments and forward them to the state agency for payment of the outstanding debt.